00:00:00
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Las Vegas, Nevada. January 26, 1979,
16-year-old Kim Bryant,
00:00:19
last seen outside a Dairy
Queen near her high school. BRIAN OXMAN: The boyfriend
came and he looked around
00:00:26
and there was no Kim. So he hung around saying
maybe she walked away, maybe she will be
here in a minute.
00:00:33
By 10:30, she wasn't there. [POLICE CAR SIRENS] NANCY GRACE: The search begins. Three weeks later,
Kim's body is discovered
00:00:41
by a 14-year-old boy who's
hiking with two friends on the outskirts of town. LYDIA ANSEL: She was
just at a Dairy Queen
00:00:49
doing what any other regular
teenager would want to do, and her life and everything
was stolen from her.
00:00:59
NANCY GRACE: Police
look for a motive. I think there's no
question that he went out
00:01:04
that morning looking to abduct
a woman and sexually assault and kill her. BRIAN OXMAN: + She was
naked from the waist down
00:01:14
and her head had been
bashed in by a rock. NANCY GRACE: The case
goes cold nearly 40 years,
00:01:23
but the development
of a revolutionary DNA investigative tool might
just give police a chance.
00:01:33
The importance of genetic
genealogy in this case is unbelievable. And in the next
five to 10 years,
00:01:39
the amount of cases that law
enforcement is going to solve around the country is going
to go through the roof,
00:01:45
as a result of this technology. Nearly four decades later,
will Kim Bryant's killer
00:01:52
finally be brought to justice? I'm Nancy Grace, and this
is "Bloodline Detectives."
00:01:59
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] [MUSIC STOPS ABRUPTLY] Las Vegas, Nevada, Sin City-- the gambling capital of America.
00:02:30
A sunny city with
a shady history. RAY SPENCER: There's
historically been a lot of crime here in the city.
00:02:38
It's not your
stranger-type crimes. Typically with homicide
or sexual assault, it's always going to be
someone that you've had
00:02:47
some type of relationship with. The fact that
stranger-type crimes be it a sexual
assault or a murder,
00:02:54
those are very, very rare. COURTNEY FRETWELL: Kim Bryant
was a 16-year-old high school
00:03:01
student living in Las Vegas,
Nevada with her mother Sherry, and her stepfather. She was a sophomore at Western
High School in Las Vegas.
00:03:13
And many would describe
Kim as your typical All-American teenage girl. [OMINOUS MUSIC]
00:03:20
NANCY GRACE: Las Vegas can
be a very violent city. That's true today, and it was
true back on January 26th,
00:03:27
1979, when 16-year-old
Kim Bryant was last seen outside a Dairy Queen. [OMINOUS MUSIC]
00:03:35
Western Hills
High school was part of a major educational
complex, which is now the University of South Nevada.
00:03:44
And Western was right across
the street from the Dairy Queen. RAY SPENCER: I graduated
from Western High School.
00:03:51
I went there 15 years after the
murder of Kim Bryant occurred. But we shared the same school.
00:03:58
We shared going to
the same Dairy Queen, all those type of things
were things that I did.
00:04:04
This was a very
typical day for Kim. She arrived at school. Her and her classmates were
on campus to enroll in classes
00:04:13
for the upcoming year. She was surrounded by many
of her friends that day. As soon as Kim and
her friends wrapped up
00:04:21
registering for classes,
her and a girlfriend decided to walk across the
street from her high school
00:04:28
to a local Dairy Queen. Her friend's mother
came by and said, hey, I'm going to
take you all home.
00:04:36
She lived about six-seven blocks
away from the high school. She says, just a minute.
00:04:44
I think my boyfriend was
going to come and pick me up. And she went to a payphone.
00:04:49
She made a call to her
boyfriend who says, I'm going to come
and pick you up. So she told her
friend and her mother
00:04:56
let me ride home
with my boyfriend. So the mother and her
friend left and left Kim
00:05:02
there alone at the Dairy Queen. The boyfriend came at
10:00 in the morning and he looked around
and there was no Kim.
00:05:13
So he hung around saying
maybe she walked away maybe she will be here in a minute.
00:05:19
By 10:30, she wasn't there. So he left and he
didn't know what to do. [POLICE CAR SIRENS BLARING]
00:05:29
RAY SPENCER: Her parents were
alerted and they were panicked, and they reached out to
the police department
00:05:33
that evening, trying
to get the police department to assist
because they knew something was wrong with Kim.
00:05:40
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] Whenever you have
a missing child and you go to take
a report, officers
00:05:46
want to search the house
because you want to find things that could give you clues.
00:05:50
You could see maybe
there's some information that's left at the house. COURTNEY FRETWELL: One of the
first things they looked at
00:05:56
was Kim's journal. And when they looked through
the journal, one of the entries caught their attention.
00:06:03
RAY SPENCER: There
is a description that she states that because
there was an argument
00:06:07
the previous night,
that she had been thinking about running away. So the police after seeing that,
believed that she had ran away.
00:06:15
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: But Kim
Bryant has not run away. Later that same day, new
clues point to something
00:06:24
much more disturbing. BRIAN OXMAN: A young
woman was driving down the street on Decatur
and she found a bag--
00:06:34
a backpack in the
middle of the street. And she stopped and
said, that's strange.
00:06:39
And she picked it up and
she looked through it. And she found Kim's ID
and her phone number.
00:06:48
So when she got home, she
called and there was no answer. So she didn't know what to do.
00:06:56
RAY SPENCER: So at that point is
when police started looking out and going to the
media and advising
00:07:02
that they believe that
Kim Bryant was in fact, missing child. NANCY GRACE: A few weeks go
by, teen girl, Kim Bryant
00:07:11
still not found, and a
community begins to worry. [POLICE CAR SIRENS] BRIAN OXMAN: Any time a child
goes missing, particularly
00:07:19
in a small town like
Las Vegas, and Las Vegas was a small town then. It still has a lot of that
attitude toward the residents.
00:07:31
It is sort a part of the culture
of the people who live there. And when a child goes missing,
the community gets upset.
00:07:40
[MUSIC PLAYING] What happened to
teen girl, Kim Bryant? The answer comes nearly a
month after she disappeared.
00:07:49
By chance, some boys out hiking
make a gruesome discovery. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] Three young men went
hiking in a desolate area
00:08:01
of Western Las Vegas. And they saw what they thought
was a wig on the ground. It was in a gully.
00:08:10
And they said this is weird,
and they went to inspect it. It wasn't a wig, it
was a young girl.
00:08:18
And it was her body. And they saw her hair protruding
from the makeshift grave where somebody had
tried to cover her up.
00:08:26
And it appeared hurriedly,
that they tried to do that. RAY SPENCER: When they
discover her body,
00:08:32
they start processing
the crime scene. Looking for evidence, looking
for a determination on what
00:08:39
caused her death, and
notified the homicide section at that point. BRIAN OXMAN: Once the coroner's
office came and the detectives,
00:08:49
they were able to recognize
this as Kim Bryant. She was naked from
the waist down.
00:08:58
She had been involved
in a horrific fight, and her head had been
bashed in by a rock.
00:09:08
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] After the examination of
her body was complete, they concluded that there
had been a sexual assault.
00:09:18
She had been raped
before she was killed. NANCY GRACE: Police act quickly
to find Kim Bryant's killer
00:09:25
and to calm a fearful community. LYDIA ANSEL: You can't
prepare yourself. But once you hear the details,
it takes the breath out of you.
00:09:34
And each detail of it
in particular, just like crushes you a little
bit of knowing
00:09:40
how young this girl
was, that she had her whole life ahead of her. And that, you know, she
was just at a Dairy Queen
00:09:48
doing what any other regular
teenager would want to do, and her life and everything
was stolen from her.
00:09:57
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] A 16-year-old girl with
her whole life ahead of her murdered by a vicious predator.
00:10:05
Police race to find her killer,
fearful he may strike again. That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives."
00:10:20
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] Las Vegas, Nevada. January 26, 1979,
16-year-old Kim Bryant,
00:10:29
last seen outside a Dairy
Queen near her high school. Three weeks later, her body
was discovered by 3 boys hiking
00:10:37
on the outskirts of town. Police secure the crime scene. But now, they have to break the
terrible news to Kim's family.
00:10:45
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] RAY SPENCER: It's very
difficult when you know, especially when
you have a family
00:10:52
that's been spending weeks
looking for their daughter in the anguish. You know police now have to
tell them that Kim's case
00:11:00
is now a murder investigation. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] NANCY GRACE:
Investigators examined
00:11:05
clothing from the
crime scene and they study the autopsy results. Kim had injuries that
were consistent that she
00:11:13
had been bludgeoned to death. And they had found a
pile of clothes nearby that had been neatly folded.
00:11:20
That scene is processed. They're going to collect all
the clothing shirts, pants,
00:11:25
underwear, rocks in the
area, anything to that effect that are going to help and aid
them in that investigation.
00:11:32
[MUSIC PLAYING] BRIAN OXMAN: By examining the
sexual assault, which is pieced together because of
bruises and injuries,
00:11:42
you can look at the woman's
last days of her life and how it is that she died. And then at the autopsy,
they looked at her head
00:11:52
and her head had been
smashed in by a rock. It's pretty gruesome. And in Kim's case, she had
lots of defensive wounds
00:12:05
on her body. We, we look at the fingers of
the victim and we see bruises and we see contusions
and scrapes.
00:12:15
We especially look at the
fingernails because in a woman, she usually will have
long fingernails.
00:12:22
And when she fights and claws
and scratches at her attacker, the fingernails will break.
00:12:29
And it is a macabre science to
look at those kinds of things and piece together the battle,
which must have been going
00:12:38
on before Kim ultimately died. NANCY GRACE: Police
gather more information and begin to follow up on leads.
00:12:48
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] COURTNEY FRETWELL: When the
police started investigating Kim's case, they had to hit
the ground running per se,
00:12:54
find potential eyewitnesses
who had either heard or saw something. They even sometimes had to
rely on jailhouse snitches.
00:13:03
So it was a much different world
for criminal investigations than it is today. [MUSIC CONTINUES]
00:13:08
Police spoke with classmates,
teachers, neighbors, everyone that they could,
trying to determine
00:13:14
who had any information as
far as where Kim may have went and her whereabouts. And early on, your first
suspect, obviously, you're
00:13:24
going to look and
try to determine what was the
boyfriend's involvement? Was there any potential
other people involved?
00:13:31
These are all things
that took place in the early investigation. A witness describes
seeing a white male
00:13:38
driving a Chevy pickup
type truck in the parking lot of Dairy Queen. We had a generic description
and a generic sketch
00:13:48
from people at the
Dairy Queen, but that generic description
of a white male did not turn up
any viable leads.
00:13:58
NANCY GRACE: The sex attack
and brutal murder of teen girl, Kim Bryant devastates the Vegas
community and the entire state.
00:14:06
There's an incredible
show of support for Kim Bryant's family, when
she is finally laid to rest.
00:14:15
BRIAN OXMAN: The whole community
turned out for Kim's funeral. This was such a tragedy.
00:14:21
The governor of the State
of Nevada was there-- Governor O'Callaghan,
and he eulogized
00:14:27
Kim for the bright,
young lady that she was. He talked about how
she has involved
00:14:34
herself in helping others. The Special Olympics were
one of her primary activities
00:14:42
of being involved with
people who needed help. She gave of herself. Well, those are all
nice things to say.
00:14:49
But for Kim's parents, it
was nothing but sadness at the loss of their child. For a parent to have
to bury their child,
00:15:01
one of the most difficult
and sad events that we ever can conceive of. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
00:15:07
NANCY GRACE: The
investigation goes on, but investigators can't
nail down any real leads.
00:15:14
BRIAN OXMAN: This
was a case, which was epitomized with blind alleys. Where the police found a
clue, chased that clue,
00:15:23
and then came up with nothing. There was a report
that there was a Jeep which was at the
Dairy Queen the morning
00:15:32
of Kim's disappearance. It turned out that was
a total blind alley. The next blind alley was a man
from Michigan, a young fellow
00:15:43
and he said to his
friends that he witnessed the murder of Kim Bryant. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
00:15:51
COURTNEY FRETWELL: When the
police heard about this guy, they travel from
Vegas to Michigan.
00:15:56
They sit down and
speak with him. And it turns out that
this guy knows absolutely
00:16:01
nothing about Kim's murder. That he made everything up
and he made it up because he
00:16:07
had heard some local teenagers
talking about Kim's murder, but he knew nothing about it.
00:16:13
BRIAN OXMAN: The
poor detectives who had traveled all the way to
Michigan thinking they had it.
00:16:18
Uh-uh, another blind alley. NANCY GRACE: For
investigators, more leads disappear and
detectives anxious this case
00:16:28
is going cold. They began to look at similar
crimes in other jurisdictions. Could there be a common
thread and possibly
00:16:37
a serial killer in their midst? [PENSIVE MUSIC] So there were other murders that
had similar patterns that they
00:16:46
wanted to see if
they were related to, and that's what brought us to
other jurisdictions looking
00:16:51
to see if there was a
potential relationship. Well, the patterns
are when you have
00:16:55
a young woman who is
abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered. The early leads and the tips
that were received at the Dairy
00:17:05
Queen through interviews with
the people who were located in the vehicle, we were
able to rule those out
00:17:10
early on as they had alibis. [PENSIVE MUSIC] The police followed up
on hundreds of leads
00:17:17
throughout the years,
and all of those leads ended up being dead ends. [POLICE SIREN'S BLARING]
00:17:23
Not only did the police have
Kim's case to investigate, but every day practically,
they were getting
00:17:29
more and more murders to solve. They were constantly
understaffed. And at the time of Kim's murder,
they were only nine homicide
00:17:37
detectives in the Department. So when a new murder
would come in, they were forced
to temporarily put
00:17:43
Kim's to the side to
be able to investigate the new homicides coming in. [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:17:48
BRIAN OXMAN: In the first
couple of months of 1980, there were 25
homicides in Las Vegas.
00:17:57
This was an
extraordinary amount. The Bryant case got
cold and it got colder, and finally, it
just disappeared.
00:18:07
Vegas PD hit a dead
end in its investigation. Nearly 40 years will pass,
as we see next on "Bloodline
00:18:17
Detectives," a breakthrough
in forensic science breathes new life into a cold case.
00:18:32
It's been nearly 40 years since
teen girl, Kim Bryant, last seen alive outside a Dairy
Queen in Las Vegas, Nevada.
00:18:41
Three weeks later, Kim's body
discovered on a hiking trail. Her killer has evaded justice
and the case remains cold.
00:18:51
Detective Ray
Spencer and his team reopened Kim's case using
a new forensic weapon
00:18:57
[MUSIC PLAYING] I got involved in
the case in 2018. And our first-- when
we looked at the case
00:19:06
and I assigned it
to an investigator, we had a couple
different suspects that we were looking at.
00:19:12
And the first one that we
looked into was Peter Morin. He had been executed in
Texas and we thought that he
00:19:22
was potentially involved. Unfortunately, from
that DNA evidence, we were able to rule him
out as being the suspect.
00:19:29
So that left us with one other
person that we were looking at. There was a person who had
made a dying declaration
00:19:37
and said some information
to a family member that they wanted to
come forward with.
00:19:42
And it involved the purse
that was turned into police, and they told us that
the purse was in fact not
00:19:50
found on the street. And that it was actually found
in the person's son's bedroom.
00:19:57
Well, when you get some
of that information years later and one, It's
a dying declaration,
00:20:02
dying declarations
often are very accurate. And when you have a dying
declaration, where the person
00:20:08
says that they believe
that it's their son that could potentially
be involved, that's very, very concerning.
00:20:16
I was hopeful at that point that
we were onto the right suspect. We went up to Utah and
we interviewed the son
00:20:26
and he admitted to
finding the purse. He admitted to having
it in his bedroom and said that his mom found the
purse inside of his bedroom.
00:20:35
And he also said he was aware
that his mom turned the purse in to police, but
he could not answer
00:20:42
for us why his mom
lied and said that she found it on the street. She never told any
investigator about finding it
00:20:50
in her son's bedroom. We wouldn't rule out anything. We didn't know if he was
the actual murder suspect
00:20:56
or if he was an accomplice. We did a lot of DNA
work and we were able to rule him out as being
the actual murder suspect.
00:21:06
NANCY GRACE: Las
Vegas Detective, Ray Spencer looks outside
his department for help
00:21:11
to solve Kim's case. The Vegas Justice League
had a very interesting development as it came.
00:21:19
It wasn't a concept
that happened, it was something that happened
because of circumstances.
00:21:26
JUSTIN WOO: So it's
a group of people that each person donated
$5,000, which is the cost of one
00:21:31
of the cases through Othram
Labs in Houston, Texas to work the DNA and create
a genealogical profile
00:21:39
and do the
genealogical research. LYDIA ANSEL: Justin
Woo was on social media and learned about Othram
Labs and DNA Solves.
00:21:48
This company was doing
incredible work solving cases using genealogy, and
it's truly astounding
00:21:56
the work they've done already. DR. DAVID MITTELMAN:
I've spent most of my career working
on developing
00:22:01
technologies to read DNA. And so that-- I started at Baylor
College of Medicine and has basically grown through
various diagnostic ventures,
00:22:10
biomedical research
projects and even some large kind of World-wide
University projects
00:22:16
like The Human Genome Project. The Human Genome Project
was a worldwide initiative
00:22:21
to map out the key positions
and the key reference markers of what is a
typical human genome.
00:22:29
DR. KRISTEN MITTELMAN:
Very early on, even as a kid I loved science
and knew that I wanted
00:22:33
to do something where I was
able to use science to make a difference in the world.
00:22:38
Baylor College of
Medicine worked on gene therapies and the neurons. Started to work on
technologies that
00:22:43
manipulate DNA and decided
that was something that I wanted to continue to pursue.
00:22:49
I met David, my husband, who
is also the CEO at Othram, at Baylor College of Medicine.
00:22:57
I actually created
these blind mice and he created the
therapies to fix them. And I thought if he could fix
that, he could fix anything.
00:23:04
So I'd marry him. [LOW CHUCKLE] And so we ended
up working on DNA projects together for decades now.
00:23:13
LYDIA ANSEL: So Justin
reached out to them being the philanthropist
that he is, and said,
00:23:17
if you can find a case in Las
Vegas, I will fully fund it. The lab was able to go to Las
Vegas Metro Police department
00:23:24
and somehow convince them to
allow a company that they'd never heard of and allow them
to give them a case that was
00:23:33
pretty much considered
unsolvable because it had so little DNA left. The Las Vegas police were
very adept at employing
00:23:42
the new technologies,
which came their way to solve the cold
cases where there is some kind of DNA evidence.
00:23:51
And Stephanie Isaacson was
one of the homicide cases where there was 1.2 nanograms
of DNA from the attacker.
00:24:02
Using those small,
insignificant amounts of DNA, they were able to
find the attacker
00:24:11
and the police were were amazed. And with that case, it broke
World Records of solving,
00:24:20
of just the work that they did. The Las Vegas PD got so excited
about now the partnerships
00:24:26
that we could do and
working together. And we wanted to fund
a whole bunch of cases.
00:24:31
The Vegas Justice
League kind of formed after we
solved the Stephanie Isaacson case in Las Vegas.
00:24:36
We wanted to come up
with a creative way to get other people in
the community on board.
00:24:43
NANCY GRACE: A $5,000 donation
from the Vegas Justice League helps to reopen
Kim Bryant's case
00:24:50
and allows the Vegas PD
and author Othram Labs to collaborate, again. Science, I believe
should be blind.
00:25:00
Our science should
definitely be blind. So we don't know
much about the case. We don't communicate
much with the detectives
00:25:09
about their theories
or their investigation prior to Othram
getting the evidence.
00:25:15
All we need to know
is that there's DNA and what the DNA looks like
and the condition of that DNA.
00:25:21
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] After it passes, QCM,
we know that we can build one of these profiles.
00:25:28
We take the DNA, we process it
under all these novel methods that we've created here
at Othram in order to get
00:25:34
the most out of that evidence. DR. DAVID MITTELMAN:
This is a typical surface for which you can
perform what is
00:25:41
called the luminous sequencing. This is a flow cell. So the way this works is that
there's this glass surface.
00:25:48
DNA is fragmented into
little pieces and then randomly positioned
kind of on an XY
00:25:54
grid on this glass surface. You literally synthesize
a new stranded DNA for each of the little
DNA's that are here.
00:26:00
You sequence the complement,
and as you synthesize it, you're using
chemically- modified
00:26:05
DNA letters that emit a color. If you take a bunch of
photos of every step of that,
00:26:10
you can essentially
reverse engineer the sequence of DNA that was
originally at any XY position
00:26:15
on the slide. The good news is it's very fast. It's very high throughput
and it's very cost effective.
00:26:21
The bad news is that
once you do that, you end up with a big text file
full of little fragments of DNA
00:26:28
letters. And those have to
be then reassembled and reconstructed into something
that represents a human genome.
00:26:34
And that represents the second
part of the challenge, which is the computational effort
to use computer software
00:26:40
and algorithms to look at these
little tiny pieces of DNA. They're called reeds, and
then try to figure out
00:26:46
where each of these pieces go. Once you've done
that, you can then look to see what makes the
DNA sequence that you've
00:26:51
produced different than that of
what would be on the reference. Then you can use that to
essentially infer one person
00:26:58
might be related to another,
whether one person was or was not at a crime scene.
00:27:02
And it just presents a more
powerful and complete view of identity. [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:27:08
NANCY GRACE: With a
tiny digitized sample of DNA from Kim Bryant's
body, Othram Labs
00:27:16
is able to reverse
engineer the code and fill in missing pieces. The only question now,
which investigative route
00:27:26
do they take? DR. DAVID MITTELMAN: That
process is about 12 weeks. It involves DNA extraction.
00:27:31
It involves a QC step. It might even involve some
iterative repair and enrichment
00:27:37
and filtering of the
DNA, to make sure that we've got the best
possible sample that DNA
00:27:42
to proceed to DNA testing. And then it includes
that testing process and the computer
work necessary to build
00:27:48
that map of markers. The second part in which
we use it, in some way to then infer identity.
00:27:54
That might be through
a genealogical search. It might be through
one-to-one comparisons.
00:27:58
Those kind of processes can take
anywhere from hours to weeks. Some of the harder
projects can take months,
00:28:03
but we generally
will return leads to the investigator
within the same year that we get the case work.
00:28:10
BRIAN OXMAN: So they had
DNA from the examinations of Kim Bryant. And they did the database
with Othram and lo and behold,
00:28:22
they came up with a match. NANCY GRACE: Las
Vegas, Nevada, 2018. Police investigating
the 1979 sex assault
00:28:40
and murder of a teen girl,
16-year-old high school student, Kim Bryant. The case has been
cold nearly 40 years.
00:28:50
Detective Ray
Spencer and his team take one last shot at
identifying the killer by contacting Othram
Labs, which has
00:28:59
an amazing investigative tool
called genetic genealogy. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] RAY SPENCER: From
that sperm sample,
00:29:08
Othram Labs was able
to create a profile. And they had information on
a potential family member
00:29:15
that they believed was
going to be the suspect. I was very excited when we got
the phone call saying that they
00:29:23
had a potential suspect. And that they just needed a
little bit more information
00:29:28
for us to do some
work on, and that they would be able to tell us if
in fact, it was the suspect.
00:29:34
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] So they gave us the name
of Johnny Blake Peterson. DR. KRISTEN MITTELMAN:
There was huge surprise.
00:29:40
I think the question that
came back is are you sure? David answered,
yes, we are sure.
00:29:45
[CHUCKLE] And that's the
thing about DNA technology. It's science, it's fact. And it gives you a direct
answer as to who was there.
00:29:56
If there was ever any doubt
there or ever any ambiguity as to whether somebody else
was involved or not involved,
00:30:05
that person's DNA was not found
in that piece of evidence. And the person's DNA that
was found was identified.
00:30:11
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] Othram Labs identifies
the man who murdered the teen girl, Kim Bryant.
00:30:20
Johnny Peterson was
19 years old at the time of Kim Bryant's death. He was never on the
radar for the police.
00:30:29
They never suspected or
knew anything about him. He was a construction worker. He lived in the area.
00:30:36
He even went to
Western High School. He graduated a year
before this incident. So did he know Kim Bryant?
00:30:47
Likely he did. The police were astounded. How is it that Kim, who was
waiting for her boyfriend
00:30:56
was abducted and nobody noticed? Nobody saw on a very busy
street at the Dairy Queen,
00:31:02
where there were lots of kids. Maybe she knew her attacker. And maybe she had
gone to say hello.
00:31:10
And the next thing she knew,
she was forced in the car. To me, that is the
likely scenario.
00:31:18
He seemed to have
the ability to have contacted her and abducted her. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
00:31:25
RAY SPENCER: We
started to have to do a deep dive into Johnny
Peterson and find out who is he?
00:31:31
What's his involvement,
and we learn that he lived in Las Vegas
at the time of the murder.
00:31:36
And that he was also connected
to some other crimes that occurred in the
City of Las Vegas
00:31:42
prior to the murder
of Kim Bryant. But to confirm that, we
needed a family member's DNA.
00:31:50
So at that point, we
reached out to the father and went and spoke and
conducted an interview with him,
00:31:57
and he gave us a
voluntary DNA sample. That way we could
either prove or disprove
00:32:03
his son's involvement. Once we tested that
DNA that in fact Johnny Peterson was the suspect
in the murder of Kim Bryant.
00:32:19
[PENSIVE MUSIC] In 2018, Vegas police finally
identify a suspect in the 1997, rape and murder of
16-year-old Kim Bryant.
00:32:34
His name, Johnny Peterson. They plan Peterson's
arrest until they find out Peterson has escaped
justice in a bizarre way.
00:32:46
He died from a drug
overdose back in 1993. RAY SPENCER: I don't
think he felt any guilt.
00:32:54
I think he died of an overdose,
and had he not had an overdose, there would probably be
more victims out there.
00:33:00
You know, you're excited
that you're able to give closure to a victim's family. But you're not able to provide
the true closure of bringing
00:33:10
a suspect to trial
and making sure that he's held accountable
for what he did. We don't how he got
her into the vehicle.
00:33:19
What I do know is that he took
her out to the edge of town and sexually
assaulted and murdered
00:33:25
her and left her where she laid
for three weeks after the fact. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
00:33:31
NANCY GRACE: Las Vegas
police have finally tied a deceased predator
named Johnny Peterson to Kim
00:33:38
Bryant's rape and murder. But now, Peterson's DNA also
connects him to the murder
00:33:44
of another young woman. RAY SPENCER: I would
say Johnny Peterson is pure evil and a monster.
00:33:52
You abducted a 16-year-old,
beautiful, young woman from a parking lot of a
Dairy Queen and murdered her.
00:34:00
Not only that, you
go on to murder another woman after the fact. And it's just--
it's a horrific case
00:34:09
that I wish he was still alive
to be held accountable for. DAVID MITTELMAN:
It's very validating
00:34:15
to find out that they were able
to also connect the same person that was previously
unconnected to a--
00:34:22
a sexually violent
homicide to another victim. And I think what it does is it
shows that the process works.
00:34:28
The law enforcement
investigators have spent years working these cases. In helping work
one of the cases,
00:34:34
we were able to provide
that little clue that connected for
law enforcement an entirely different case.
00:34:39
And I think-- I think this is
a wonderful thing because they invested the time, the money,
and the effort to work one case
00:34:44
and ended up with a value
for more than one case. LYDIA ANSEL: Hearing that there
was a serial killer involved,
00:34:50
you get a mix of emotions. There's anger. And you're like how
can someone like this
00:34:56
continually get away with it? And how can someone
like this exist? And how can they be out there
and hurt more and more people?
00:35:04
And why aren't we doing more? And there then comes in a
slight feeling of like, well,
00:35:10
maybe we can stop more
of this happening. BRIAN OXMAN: We say,
hey, there's closure
00:35:16
and that we want to know what
happened to our loved ones. After this amount of
time, we've buried
00:35:23
it so deep in our thoughts. And we become numb. The fact that the police
solved this crime,
00:35:30
they were very proud of that. And they should have been. But telling the parents
reopens all the wounds, all
00:35:36
the memories, all the tears. NANCY GRACE: Investigators
inform Kim Bryant's family.
00:35:44
And then, police tell the
entire Las Vegas community. For the past 42
years, this case
00:35:53
has been reviewed by
numerous LV AND PD detectives hoping to gather new leads. 10 days ago, we were notified
that the genealogical profile
00:36:04
built by Othram Labs, based on
sperm recovered from the body of Kim Bryan at autopsy,
revealed that Johnny Blake
00:36:13
Peterson was the
person who kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and
murdered Kim Bryant.
00:36:19
NANCY GRACE: For
Detective Ray Spencer, Kim Bryant's murder
has special meaning.
00:36:26
This case affected
me because I know exactly where it occurred. You know, I grew
up in that area.
00:36:33
I've been in that Dairy Queen
probably 200 times in my life. You know, I walked across the
street to the football field.
00:36:39
I was probably in the
exact same classrooms. No question, I walk
down the same hallways,
00:36:44
you know, that Kim Bryant
did 15 years before I went to Western High School. So it's unique in the
situation where, you know,
00:36:51
you share that in common
with a victim on a case that I get to solve
40 years later.
00:37:01
BRIAN OXMAN: This
case, the police were able to take out the box. And for reasons, which no
one really knew at the time,
00:37:09
they had preserved
the DNA evidence. Oh, my goodness, kudos to them. They didn't even
know about how DNA
00:37:18
evidence would work back then. But then to have the benefit so
many years later of analyzing
00:37:27
that DNA, pretty remarkable. RAY SPENCER: We were overwhelmed
with joy that we were
00:37:33
able to solve such an old case. And right now, it's
still the oldest cold case that the Metropolitan
Police Department has solved.
00:37:41
And, you know, we look
at those type of cases. And we tell the family
it doesn't matter
00:37:46
how many years have
passed, we never forget about their loved one. And that we're
always going to keep
00:37:52
working and doing
everything we can to solve their loved one's murder. NANCY GRACE: For Bloodline
Detectives, like Ray Spencer,
00:37:59
the science of genetic genealogy
is now a weapon of choice. RAY SPENCER:
Genealogy is extremely
00:38:07
important because without it, we
never solve Kim Bryant's case. And the fact that we
have this technology
00:38:15
and we're able to put pieces
together that we would never have been able to
do 20 years ago,
00:38:21
is what's going to
change the face of law enforcement moving forward. DAVID MITTELMAN: If there are
no leads and there's nothing
00:38:27
to work from and you've
exhausted all existing methods, I think forensic genetic
genealogy is the tool
00:38:32
of the future to make that-- that case solvable. There's no justice. You're never going to bring
true closure to the family,
00:38:42
but at least we have answers. And, you know, what's
going to happen, I can tell you, in
the future is Othram
00:38:48
is going to solve another case. And another family is
going to get closure, but they're also
going to get justice
00:38:54
because there's going
to be another case where the suspect is alive. And we're going to be
able to prosecute it.
00:39:02
NANCY GRACE: This
remarkable new technology is now being adopted by
people beyond the law
00:39:07
enforcement community under
a program called DNASolves. KRISTEN MITTELMAN: DNASolves
is a group of advocates, people
00:39:16
that believe in this
technology and what we do here at Othram that tries to
solve the problems that
00:39:24
are easy to solve. For example, bringing
awareness to these cases by sharing them with
their group of friends.
00:39:30
Or helping forensic genetic
genealogy by uploading your DNA onto the database. Or by helping by providing
funds for some of these cases
00:39:41
that are unfunded. A lot of the times,
a couple of dollars, which you would have
paid for a cup of coffee,
00:39:48
will help solve a case. I think that in the future
when there's a DNA dead end, it won't be a cold
case for decades
00:39:56
and decades and decades. I think that case will
quickly be flipped to advanced forensic testing.
00:40:02
And then the perpetrator
will be caught in real-time, hopefully, before
they commit another crime.
00:40:07
And I think that's
going to create a safer world for all of us. And if nothing else, become
a deterrent for future crime.
00:40:16
NANCY GRACE: Justice
is never neat and tidy. And Johnny Peterson never
served one day in jail
00:40:24
for the women he murdered. But at least now,
after four decades, Kim Bryant's family
know he was the killer.
00:40:34
The more DNA from
everyday people that becomes available for
public use, the more cases,
00:40:41
like Kim Bryant's and so
many others, will be solved. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us here
on "Bloodline Detectives."
00:40:51
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