00:00:11
NANCY GRACE: Lakeland,
Florida, September 4, 1981. 15-year-old Jeff Slaton and
12-year-old little brother Tim
00:00:20
awakened by police
in their own home. What these two
boys see next will change their lives forever.
00:00:30
Why is the cop in my
house, waking me up? I thought, is the house on fire? I don't know what was going on.
00:00:35
And he kept saying, you need to
go outside with your brother. I'm like, why ain't he
saying my mom's name?
00:00:42
NANCY GRACE: Linda Slaton's
murder stuns even the most hardened police investigators.
00:00:48
She had like a sundress
on that had been pulled down, exposing her
breast, and pulled
00:00:54
up, exposing her midsection. And she could see
that she had a coat hanger wrapped around her neck.
00:01:03
NANCY GRACE: Lakeland
Police must act quickly to catch a brutal
killer while the Slaton
00:01:08
family wrestles with the
enormity of their loss. And I would've died
that night, saving my mom,
00:01:16
if I could have heard something. Because me and my
brother was in the house, and I didn't hear nothing.
00:01:21
NANCY GRACE: The Slaton case
goes cold for nearly 40 years. But then, a groundbreaking
new investigative tool
00:01:28
called genetic genealogy
becomes a weapon for police. Tonight, the amazing story
of how science and old
00:01:38
school detective work, combined,
solved a decades-old crime. I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives."
00:02:12
Lakeland, Florida, a small
city located between Tampa and Orlando, a single
mom Linda Slaton
00:02:20
and her two boys,
Jeff and Tim, moved there from Alabama in 1973. On the morning of
September 4, 1981,
00:02:32
Linda Slaton's
sister Judy becomes concerned when Linda fails to
show up for morning coffee.
00:02:39
She goes to sister Linda's home. Judy lived in the same
complex, so it wasn't too far.
00:02:46
She just walked down there,
knocked on the front door, tried to get an answer. There was no answer.
00:02:51
So as she was walking
away, she looked back at the side of the
apartment and noticed
00:02:56
that the screen was
off of the window, which she thought was unusual. So she went over there, and
then that's when she ultimately
00:03:03
looked in the window and saw her
sister, completely unresponsive with that hanger
around her neck.
00:03:07
And she started to scream. And her feet were dangling
off the side of the bed, and she could see
that she had a coat
00:03:17
hanger wrapped around
her neck, and that she appeared to be deceased. So she ran out front,
screaming for help.
00:03:25
And somebody called 911. I started hearing like a
walkie talkie breaking up in the room, and it was a cop.
00:03:33
He was coming in
there, and I'm sitting there, a 15-year-old
kid, I'm trying to figure
00:03:36
out what was going on. And I asked him,
what's going on? And he said, police officer.
00:03:40
Stay in bed. And about the third time he
did that, he told me to put on some clothes and go outside.
00:03:45
So I put on clothes. And he made sure I went
out the front door, and I remember like
every cop and everybody.
00:03:50
So many people were around,
like thousands of cops, and people, and news crews were
down both sides of the street.
00:03:56
And my Aunt Judy was
out there, crying. And she told me, my
mom's been murdered.
00:04:00
And that's I started
crying, holding her. A uniformed cop
was waking me up. And then, you know,
that was the first thing
00:04:07
that's strange to me. And why is the cop in
my house waking me up? I thought, is the house on fire?
00:04:11
I don't know what was going on. And he kept saying, you need to
go outside with your brother.
00:04:16
I'm like, why isn't he
saying my mom's name? He just keeps saying you need
to go outside with your brother.
00:04:21
As he opened my door, they were
coming out of my mom's room, and that's when I saw
the whole crime scene.
00:04:26
So then, I knew what happened. And then, they ultimately
wanted to lock down the scene
00:04:34
and preserve as much
evidence as possible. I think it's a
very personal crime to see how closely
the hanger was
00:04:42
tightened down around her neck. I mean, it was a very angry,
to me, a very violent killing.
00:04:48
Well, the scene
was really confined to the mother's bedroom. The screen was missing
from the window.
00:04:55
She was small woman. She was only like 4
foot 10, so her feet weren't even
touching the ground,
00:05:01
hanging off the end of the bed. And the hanger
had been tightened down, where it was into her
skin about a half an inch.
00:05:09
There was claw
marks on her neck, where she was trying to
pry the hanger loose. You see a lot of pictures.
00:05:18
And a lot of bad things
that happen to people, but I had never seen that,
where they had actually
00:05:24
used a coat hanger to
strangle somebody and then actually sexual battery. NANCY GRACE: Police interview
the family, including
00:05:31
Linda's sons, Tim and Jeff
before the boys are taken away from the horrific crime scene.
00:05:40
I remember, once I got back
to my grandparents' house, I swear, I cried for
two weeks straight.
00:05:45
Because that image just
kept going over in my head. You know, her, laying on
the bed, partially clothed,
00:05:50
you know, murdered, beaten,
and stabbed to death. After that happened, we was
all scared to death because we
00:05:56
didn't know who it was. We thought it might have
been somebody in the family. I remember for about a week,
we all stayed in one room.
00:06:01
And my grandpa sat there with a
loaded gun for the first week, because we was all
scared to death.
00:06:07
We all thought, you
know, he's out the middle of an orange grove in
this old farmhouse.
00:06:10
It'd be easy for somebody to
come down and kill us all. NANCY GRACE: Linda
Slaton's family,
00:06:15
traumatized by what happened. Especially in that
particular neighborhood. It was a brand new neighborhood
that was slowly being built.
00:06:26
It wasn't all the way
finished at the time of this. So there was a lot of single
women, single mothers.
00:06:31
And I'm sure, it struck
panic into that neighborhood. I'm sure that most women,
when they saw it, absolutely,
00:06:40
I'm sure that it was a lot more
people locking their doors. You know, probably back
then, in '81 people didn't
00:06:45
lock their doors as much. I, kind of, felt
this person came in through that bedroom
window because there
00:06:52
was some shoe prints. And then, you got these
coat hangers that was used, one under her, and then
one around her neck
00:06:59
that appeared to be the same
coat hangers in her closet So was this person
hiding in her closet,
00:07:05
and then she'd come in
there, and he attacked her. I was just kind of concerned
that we had somebody that
00:07:12
wasn't going to stop at one. You know, that they had
probably done some things, maybe some sexual
batteries beforehand,
00:07:20
maybe have a serial rapist
that graduated to homicide and would continue to do this.
00:07:28
NANCY GRACE: Police find solid
leads are hard to come by, and they wrestle
with the thought
00:07:34
that there may be a serial
killer on the loose. That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives."
00:07:50
Lakeland, Florida,
September 4, 1981. Linda Slaton's
sister finds Linda brutally murdered
with a coat hanger
00:07:58
still wrapped around her neck. Police are called to the scene
to discover the victim's sons,
00:08:04
15-year-old Jeff and little
brother 12-year-old Tim still both asleep inside. They collected the
footprints from the carpets
00:08:18
around the bed. They got fingerprints from
the entry point, which was the window into the bedroom.
00:08:24
They also got fingerprints
in the closet. The hanger was a match to the
other hangers in the closet.
00:08:32
And then, of course, the semen,
which provided the DNA sample. They took as much as
they thought they could--
00:08:39
I mean, obviously, they
wanted to take an ashtray, just in case the suspect
was in there, smoking,
00:08:45
or left some kind of evidence. They took a glass of water. They took the
sheets, her clothing.
00:08:50
They took hangers
that were on the bed, some hangers that
compared to what looked like the
same exact hangers
00:08:56
that were used to go around
her neck from her closet. They took shoes because
there were shoe prints
00:09:01
on the bed, fingerprints. They took everything,
and they did a great job of preserving that evidence.
00:09:08
I think there was over
150 pieces of evidence taken from the scene that time. They didn't take near the
pictures that they would today,
00:09:16
but they took a
number of pictures. And then, the detectives would
start interviewing and trying
00:09:22
to figure out a
victimology for her and who might would want
to do this in the area,
00:09:28
and so forth, kind
of, figuring out what she did the day before. NANCY GRACE: Lakeland Police
secured the crime scene,
00:09:35
and they began to retrace the
family's last evening together. I came home from school, then
I went to football practice.
00:09:47
I got home about
8:30 that night. I got a shower, and the
people that lived beside us
00:09:54
wanted her to come over,
but I tagged along. And they was over there
playing cards and watching TV.
00:10:00
I remember getting
something to eat, and we didn't have a
whole lot in the house.
00:10:03
And my mom had a little
stew on the stove. And she wouldn't let
me have any of it.
00:10:08
And there was other stuff
to eat in the house, but it wasn't what I want. I was a typical 15-year-old
kid, so I got pissed off,
00:10:14
and I took my bicycle and road
to the north side of town, to my grandma and grandpa's
house, to get something to eat.
00:10:19
The information that the
original detectives were getting was Jeff and his mother
actually got into an argument
00:10:28
that night before
all this happened, to the point that she
told him to leave. And he jumped on his
bicycle and left and went
00:10:38
to his grandparents'
house, and hung out with them for several hours. And then, they
brought him back home
00:10:43
around 9:15-9:30 that night. So, obviously, there's
some things going on. She's been telling
friends and neighbors
00:10:52
that her and Jeff's
having some issues, and she just don't
know what to do. And he's 15 years old, and he's
being a teenager, you know?
00:11:01
And I'm sure he's might be
a handful to her, you know? Just because of those
kind of things being said,
00:11:08
you got to look
at them, you know? The doors are locked. I mean, obviously, this
window is open, but you know,
00:11:15
could have something happen
that Jeff did something? You don't know
until you find out,
00:11:20
until you ask and
follow through with it. NANCY GRACE: Investigators
wait for the results
00:11:27
of Linda Slaton's autopsy. There was claw
marks where you could see she was pulling
at the hanger,
00:11:34
obviously, when she
was losing her breath. And she just tried
clawing it off. And so, there was-- her
fingernails were just
00:11:41
scraped her skin pretty deep. It was homicide. And then, it was
by strangulation
00:11:47
with the wire hanger. They document the injuries. They look for any other
forensic evidence.
00:11:54
Obviously, they do a rape
kit on this particular case, took fingernail clippings, which
is pretty standard in homicide.
00:12:02
I remember being down at the
funeral home for her funeral. And me, and my grandma,
my grandpa, and my brother
00:12:09
was looking at my
mom in the casket. And you could see where she
was just clawing at her neck,
00:12:13
trying to get this coat
hanger off her neck. They tried to make it
up and cover it up,
00:12:16
but you could see where
she was just clawing, trying to get that
thing off her neck
00:12:21
while she was getting murdered. And that just burned in
my mind this whole time.
00:12:29
In 1981, forensic
science is not readily available as
an investigative tool. Eventually, a DNA
sample from Linda's body
00:12:39
will become a crucial
element in this case. But for now, investigators
using old fashioned police
00:12:47
work to narrow down
a suspect list. They ultimately wanted
to speak to anybody that
00:12:54
would have been close or,
maybe, had some kind of motive with Linda. They spoke to her ex-boyfriend
that she broke up with a couple
00:13:00
of days prior, just to,
kind of, get his alibi and make sure that
he didn't do it.
00:13:04
They spoke to the ex-husbands. You know, because there was
one of their ex-husbands
00:13:07
that had a very toxic
relationship with her, where it was a physical
abusive relationship.
00:13:12
So they wanted to make sure
that they had all that path cleared up, as far as, you
know, they had an alibi,
00:13:18
rolling them out with DNA
at that point in time. And then, if they would consent
to polygraphs back then.
00:13:25
They interviewed
the neighbors. There was a little get
together at the next door
00:13:29
neighbor's house. Linda and Tim had been
at that gathering. So, obviously, they wanted
to look at all the people
00:13:36
that were at that gathering. They did test all those men,
but there was no evidence
00:13:41
that there was any flirting
or anything like that going on during that get together.
00:13:46
Sometimes, they come
get me from the farmhouse. Most of the time, they
get me out of school.
00:13:49
And they'd come and
get me, interrogate me all the time, having me on lie
detector test, or polygraph,
00:13:54
or whatever. They want to put me
under hypnosis and stuff, and that part was hard.
00:13:58
They came down here to get me
another time, and my grandma and grandpa, they lied
into these two cops
00:14:03
and told them to get out
and leave his family alone. Get out and find out who
murdered my daughter.
00:14:07
I mean, they had a little
bit more colorful language, and I never heard them cuss.
00:14:10
But after my grandma my
grandpa got into them, they'd never come
harass me no more.
00:14:14
It was bad. One time, the one cop,
Detective Williams, he was a bigger, heavier set cop.
00:14:19
He was talking
about, Jeff, you're a big, strong, young man. You've got big arms on you and
strong enough to put your hands
00:14:24
around your mom's
neck and murder her. Cops said that to me. I'm just the 15-year-old
kid, hurt, and lost my mom.
00:14:29
And that would always hurt. I came so close to hitting him
in the head as hard as I could,
00:14:32
but I didn't. I can understand
because, ultimately, we wanted to be able to
know who the killer was.
00:14:40
You can't just focus on
one person, you know? I don't think that they
focused specifically on Jeff.
00:14:46
They were just
trying to make sure that they dotted all their I's
and cross all their T's, ruling
00:14:51
him out. And him being a
typical teenage boy, having an argument with
his mom, he was there
00:14:56
in the house that's something
that that's what investigators do is, they try to get
interview to the point
00:15:02
where they can rule
them out as a suspect. Shortly after, the cops
were taking me out of school
00:15:08
all the time. I'd wind up dropping out, quit. And I was getting
so embarrassed. I was getting taken out
of school all the time.
00:15:16
And I was already
struggling enough. My mom got murdered,
and I was already having
00:15:19
a hard enough time in school. And I wound up dropping out. There's a couple of times
I thought about committing
00:15:26
suicide because I didn't know
who murdered my mom, what was going on, and got into
drugs, and drinking
00:15:32
bad, and working some little
jobs, work in a packing house. I remember one week, working
129 and 1/2 hours there.
00:15:39
That's a lot of hours for
a 15-year-old kid to do. I was partying one
night, doing whiskey,
00:15:46
and drinking, and marijuana. And I thought I
was going to die. I started getting sick, and
I couldn't get sick no more.
00:15:53
And I thought I was dying. I must have had
alcohol poisoning. I asked the God. I said, God, you let me live.
00:15:58
I knocked this mess
off, and I did. My kids have never seen
me drinking or nothing.
00:16:03
My Katie, she's 21. And my Brian's 18. NANCY GRACE: Police collide
into one dead end after another.
00:16:14
When I started in '98
looking at it, and we started sending stuff off for DNA. We ended up getting
a DNA profile.
00:16:22
So that was huge. And then, of course,
you want it entered into the national database
to compare to anybody
00:16:28
else that's in the database. And we weren't getting any hits. We had some latent prints that
were lifted in the crime scene.
00:16:37
That was being
compared to AFIS, you know, the Automated Fingerprint
Identification System.
00:16:43
We weren't having
any luck hitting on the DNA or the fingerprints. We had a lot of
unidentified prints.
00:16:49
That was something else
that we were doing. We were trying to get
fingerprints from people
00:16:54
and and DNA from them. NANCY GRACE: Linda
Slaton's case goes cold. As we see next on
"Bloodline Detectives,"
00:17:03
it will be 38 long years
before investigators get a chance to solve it. Lakeland, Florida, September
4, 1981, Linda Slaton,
00:17:23
a single mom of
two boys, brutally murdered in the
family home, strangled by a metal coat hanger.
00:17:31
Police are called to the
scene to discover Linda's sons Jeff and Tim are still both
sound asleep in the home.
00:17:41
The investigation goes cold. But then, in 2001, 20 years
after Linda Slaton's death,
00:17:49
detective Brad Grice
reopens the case. My biggest thing
was to eliminate the original suspects, you know,
the boyfriend, anybody that
00:18:02
was brought up that was
suspicious out in that neighborhood during
that time frame.
00:18:09
This particular day,
Tim and Jeff Slaton walks into the criminal
investigations division.
00:18:15
And when I greet them, I
realized that I had known Jeff for several years and
didn't know his last name,
00:18:23
and I never put two and two
together reading this report. He recognized me. I recognized him, which made
things a little bit easier.
00:18:32
Any time that he wanted
to call, or any time that he wanted to
come down, that I was
00:18:37
willing to sit down with him. I may have some
information, or I may not. But him, knowing that
somebody is looking
00:18:44
at his mother's
case 20 years later, I think was just
huge for him and Tim. And all the ones
that have worked on it,
00:18:53
we really got close to
him for for a long time. And we'd always go
down and talk to him.
00:18:57
He would talk to
us all the time. He really, really wanted
to solve the case. I only had one son.
00:19:04
I named my son Brad
after Brad Grice. But then, I got to
how much he wanted to resolve my mom's case, who
murdered my mama, you know?
00:19:14
NANCY GRACE: Linda Slaton's
own sons, Jeff and Tim, helped detective Grice
ID possible suspects
00:19:21
from 20 years ago. They know about DNA, and
they know how strong that is because I was telling them.
00:19:29
We've already sent a
bunch of stuff off, and a lot of these people
have been eliminated.
00:19:34
Well, then, they
start providing me with names of people
that, hey, you know, have you looked at so-and-so?
00:19:41
His brother was a friend
of ours back then, and maybe you want
to look at him. And so, we would track them down
if we could and get their DNA.
00:19:50
And so, it was a continual thing
over the next several years. NANCY GRACE: The
friendship between Linda
00:19:58
Slaton's son Jeff
and Detective Brad Grice builds over the years. But now, Jeff faces a growing
fear that his mother's killer
00:20:10
will not be
identified before Brad retires from the police force. He asked me to
please not retire
00:20:20
until I was able to
solve his mother's case. Over the years, it just tore
him and Tim up, not knowing
00:20:28
know who killed their mother. He was so afraid that he
knew the person that killed
00:20:35
his mother, that he might
have sat across the table from this person that
killed his mother.
00:20:40
And for him to not know that and
not know who that person was, I think, driving him crazy.
00:20:49
That's bothered my whole
life being scared to death, always looking over my
shoulder, and thinking
00:20:53
it was somebody I know. And I slept with a
switchblade knife stuck in the wall or my pillow.
00:20:57
Today, I have a loaded gun by me
every night when I go to sleep. I got an alarm system
on my house and cameras,
00:21:02
all because of this dirt bag. If anybody ever
come to my house, they won't walk back out,
I can promise you that.
00:21:07
Because I usually
have two guns next to me at nighttime
when I'm sleeping. There are certain cases that
you take home after you retire.
00:21:15
This was definitely one of them. It hurt me to leave. I didn't want the case to die.
00:21:21
I was afraid that it was
just going to get put back on a shelf, and it didn't. Thank God, it didn't.
00:21:30
Brad Grice works the case
right up until his retirement day, and then hands it over to
fellow detective Tammy Hathcock
00:21:38
and her team in 2018. They pursued the possibility
of using a new forensic tool--
00:21:45
investigative genetic genealogy. About 2018 is when we got
a phone call from Florida
00:21:52
Department of Law
Enforcement, and they were, kind of, talking
about this new technology,
00:21:56
this genetic genealogy. And we had already
seen that in the news, and we had, kind
of, actually learned
00:22:02
a little bit about that in some
classes that we were taking. So we were, kind of,
already on that path,
00:22:07
but it was the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement that, kind of, just
pushed us to say,
00:22:11
you know, this is probably
the best way to go. And so, ultimately,
that's when we
00:22:15
submitted some of the
subsamples of the DNA to them. Once it's uploaded to the
databases I have access to,
00:22:24
I receive a list of matches. That's a list of
people who share what we consider significant
amounts of DNA
00:22:31
with our unknown suspect. All we have is a name,
and it could be an alias. It could be initials.
00:22:37
It could be a very common
name, and I have to figure out who that person is. I need to get their
tree to the level, where
00:22:44
I can start connecting into
the traditional genealogical records. To do that, I often have
to use social media,
00:22:51
people search databases,
newspaper archives, obituaries, if I can find
one naming that match.
00:22:59
Fortunately, in this
case, the very top match had an extremely unique name. I think she's the only
person in the United States
00:23:06
with that name. So I was able to
quickly identify her. NANCY GRACE: At first, CeCe
Moore and her team at Parabon
00:23:14
Nanolabs seem close
to cracking the case, but then, they hit a roadblock. Unfortunately learned
that she does not
00:23:23
know the identity of
her biological father or her maternal grandfather. That meant we only
had one quarter
00:23:31
of her biological family tree. Someone's DNA means
absolutely nothing to me, if I can't marry that with
their biological family.
00:23:39
I already don't know
who this killer is, and I rely on being
able to build the family
00:23:44
trees of those sharing DNA
with him in order to reverse engineer his identity. Once I set that match aside,
I was dealing with a much more
00:23:53
typical case, where we
have multiple cousins around the third cousin
level, maybe second cousin
00:23:59
once removed level. Of those matches, I
was able to build three separate genetic networks.
00:24:06
Now, genetic
networks are clusters or grouping of matches, who all
share a common ancestral line.
00:24:13
So it's not just
important who is sharing DNA with our suspect,
but who on that list
00:24:18
also shares DNA with each other. And so, I was able to take
several of those matches,
00:24:23
and build their trees, and
find their common ancestors. NANCY GRACE: So often, the
process of forensic science
00:24:32
is like taking two
giant steps forward and then one giant step back. And that's how it is for the
team at Parabon Nanolabs,
00:24:41
until they make a
remarkable breakthrough. I remember it, literally,
like it was yesterday.
00:24:49
Obviously, we had to meet
in the conference room. A lot of people were there
during that conference call.
00:24:53
They talked about it. It's like an
investigative lead is what we would call it as detectives.
00:24:59
Well, there was only one
man that was related to all of those top matches that I
was able to build trees for
00:25:06
and descended from all
three genetic networks, and that was a man named
Joseph Mills, who actually
00:25:12
lived in that neighborhood. I remember going
back through the file, seeing his name in there.
00:25:19
And I took that piece
of paper, and I ran down the hallway to my supervisor. I don't know if you
could picture me.
00:25:26
I'm wearing dress
clothes and heels, and I'm running down there
with this piece of paper
00:25:29
saying, oh, my God.
Oh, my God. We interviewed him. We interviewed him back in 1981.
00:25:33
So it wasn't like
just a random suspect. It was somebody that had been
interviewed back in the day
00:25:38
and that had some, kind
of, close relationship with the family. NANCY GRACE: Joseph
Mills was actually
00:25:44
interviewed at the time
of Linda Slaton's murder. He's well known to the family.
00:25:49
And at the time of the murder,
he was trusted as a friend and authority figure. Joseph Mills was the
football coach of Linda
00:26:00
Slaton's younger son Tim. It was him and
another assistant coach, and they would give me rides.
00:26:07
Because after my mom was
killed, and my aunt had two little kids, and my grandparents
would take care of the farm,
00:26:12
they would offer
to give me rides back and forth to
practice twice a week and the games on Saturdays.
00:26:17
And so, she was
killed on September 4. And football back then, last
until, like, in November.
00:26:22
So I mean, I was in
the car with this man several times after the
fact and never had a clue.
00:26:29
NANCY GRACE: CeCe
Moore and her team at Parabon NanoLabs
gave police a name-- Joseph Mills and
a possible genetic
00:26:38
link to the murder scene. Mills becomes the prime suspect
for Linda Slaton's murder.
00:26:46
At that time, I got to
get a strategy together to be able to confirm
that this is the guy that
00:26:52
contributed the DNA. At that point in time, I
was an investigative lead. But we still had to have
that 100% of getting
00:27:00
his DNA to compare
it to the DNA that was found inside the victim. The "Bloodline
Detectives" getting
00:27:07
very close to identifying
Linda Slaton's killer. They still have to
match the suspect's
00:27:13
DNA to the crime scene. And then, they've
got to find him. That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives."
00:27:31
Lakeland, Florida,
September 4, 1981. Linda Slaton's sister
Judy finds Linda brutally murdered
with a coat hanger
00:27:41
still wrapped around her neck. Police are called to the scene. They discovered Linda's
sons, Jeff and Tim,
00:27:50
are both still sound
asleep in the home. Leads go nowhere. The case goes cold. But now, almost 40 years
later, investigators
00:28:03
have a suspect, whose DNA is
linked to the crime scene. The suspect is
Linda Slaton's son's
00:28:12
football coach, Joseph Mills. In '81 he was just
interviewed, basically, because Timmy had actually
talked about how he had gotten
00:28:23
home from football
practice, that his football coach Joe had dropped him off. What he said, at
that point in time,
00:28:29
was that he just spoke to
her out in the parking lot. She had come up to
the car and said,
00:28:33
how did he do in practice? And it was just a very small
conversation, and that he
00:28:38
had never really gone in there. NANCY GRACE: Genetic
genealogy clearly identifies the old football
coach, Joseph Mills,
00:28:47
as a suspect. But for definitive proof, s
detectives still need to secure a DNA sample from Mills.
00:28:56
Once we got his name, we
submitted the fingerprints to be comparison
because we found that
00:29:01
he had been arrested in '84. Those weren't of AFIS quality,
so they had to do it by hand
00:29:08
to compare the fingerprints
between the ones that we collected from
the scene and then, also,
00:29:12
Joseph Mills at the time. And then, they were
able to say that, yes, his fingerprints were there on
the scene, on the windowsill,
00:29:19
on the window. So that was, again, another
piece of the evidence that we had to be able
to say, all right,
00:29:25
we're on the right path. While we're doing
that, that's when we started surveilling
him, following him
00:29:31
around to get discarded stuff. We looked his Facebook up. We followed him
around continuously
00:29:38
to try to get him just to
discard any kind of DNA. They were doing trash runs. They were trying to watching to
see if he would drop something
00:29:47
through the trash run. I believe they actually
found something that they were able
to get his DNA from,
00:29:54
which, once it matched,
then they were able to get probable cause for an actual
search warrant to, actually,
00:30:02
physically get his DNA
to confirm all that. I'm digging through this
trash can like I'm on a mission.
00:30:09
And as soon as I know that
that's the bag that I know that belongs to him, because
I got some mail in it,
00:30:16
I ultimately, obviously,
started concentrating even more on trying to find something that
we could test for a DNA match,
00:30:23
and I found it. We found two colostomy bags. And the reason we knew
he had a colostomy bag
00:30:30
is, we do, obviously,
look in social media, and we were able
to find that he had
00:30:34
a social media post on Facebook
of him having a colostomy bag. So I knew that that was his.
00:30:40
So at that point in time,
I drove it over to Tampa, and I didn't want
to wait any longer.
00:30:45
I wanted to get that
100% confirmation. NANCY GRACE: A few weeks later,
Lakeland police detective Tammy
00:30:54
Hathcocks gets the call
from the lab in Tampa, the call that she's
been waiting for.
00:31:01
I remember, she called
me on my birthday. And she said, I've got a
birthday present for you.
00:31:05
And I said, what's that? And she gave me that
verbal confirmation that that was the
contributor of the DNA
00:31:12
that was taken from the
sexual assault kit for Linda. I was super excited because
I knew that we were so close.
00:31:18
We were so close to being able
to give that news to the boys. The state attorney
had reached out to me.
00:31:26
They felt it would be good
to have me present with Jeff and Tim when they talked
to him, to tell them
00:31:32
that they had something going. They couldn't tell him
who the person was. We didn't let them know,
and that was probably
00:31:40
one of the tougher
things is to actually interview them without letting
them we knew who it was.
00:31:44
So we just locked
them into a story, making sure that they remembered
everything that they told
00:31:50
the detectives back in 1981. We sat down with the
state attorney's office. We'd strategize, like what
would be the questions
00:31:57
that we needed to ask him. We wanted to do just a very
soft, non-custodial just talk
00:32:02
with him. Just to see if he
remembers anything. So at that point
in time, we did.
00:32:07
We went and met with
him on December 4. NANCY GRACE: Police
and forensic science
00:32:12
have combined to
identify Linda Slaton's killer, nearly 40 years later. Next, the "Bloodline Detectives"
must confront the suspect they
00:32:23
are certain is Linda's killer. Lakeland, Florida,
2019, police desperately want to question Joseph
Mills for the 1981 murder
00:32:46
of single mom Linda Slaton. Mills is ID'd after
police utilize the science of genetic genealogy.
00:32:54
Mills was also Linda Slaton's
son's football coach. We wanted to get a
statement from him,
00:33:17
so we decided to go to his
house and knock on his door and see if he would stick to
his original statement, which
00:33:23
was he's never been to the
house, never been inside. And it was, kind of, odd
because he invited us in,
00:33:31
and we talked to him. Initially, he was
like, I don't know what homicide you're talking about.
00:33:36
And obviously, I
felt that to be odd because I think that would be a
significant event in your life
00:33:41
that you wouldn't forget. But then, when we showed
him pictures of Linda Slaton and Timmy, he remembered,
and he did stick
00:33:48
to his original statement,
that he didn't know her, never been in the house. At that point in time, it
didn't seem like he felt like he
00:34:16
had anything to worry about. I had to go testify in
front of the grand jury, but there was a warrant issued
for him at that point in time.
00:34:23
So we actually went
back out there, and we arrested him,
and transported him back to the police
department to do
00:34:29
the more custodial interview. He didn't try to resist. He was actually just very calm
and didn't really ask a lot
00:34:51
about, like, what's going on? I mean, he asked what
the warrant was for. It was a weird conversation.
00:34:56
You know, I sat in the
back seat with him. I just had to have, like,
a normal conversation,
00:35:01
but it wasn't like he was
acting like he was upset or trying to resist. He was just almost like
he was along for a ride.
00:35:10
We just started
questioning him. And he, again, pretended
like he's never been there,
00:35:15
didn't know her, and all that. And then, when we confronted
him with the evidence, he said,
00:35:19
he didn't really understand
the genealogy DNA aspect of it. So we tried to
clarify that for him
00:35:26
and explained to him that
we know he was in there. So he can either
stick to the story,
00:35:32
or he can tell us the truth. And that's when he changed
it and said that she invited
00:35:36
him over for consensual sex. We never brought
up the hanger. He actually brought that
up in the interview.
00:36:13
He explained to us
that she had the hanger already around
his neck, when she invited him through the window.
00:36:19
We confronted it him on it. And he, kind of, stuck to it. He was basically trying
to put the blame on her.
00:36:25
We did get him to admit
that he tightened it down at her request until
she lost consciousness,
00:36:30
and then he left. NANCY GRACE: Nearly
40 years and thousands of hours of painstaking
police work have passed.
00:36:39
Finally, investigators
charged the old football coach, Joseph Mills,
with the murder
00:36:46
a single mom Linda Slaton. I wanted him to go on trial
and go for the death penalty.
00:36:53
That's what I wanted. And you know, he chickened
out again, you know? I think that whenever
he saw everything
00:37:00
that we had against
him, he wasn't going to win that battle. He wasn't going
to win that trial.
00:37:05
He was going to,
ultimately, be found guilty. And that's the reason why
he ultimately chose to plea.
00:37:12
I think this is a good outcome
that he would plea to this, get life in prison. He'll never get out
and hurt anybody else.
00:37:20
I'm sure Jeff and
Tim, certainly, would have liked to have seen that. It would have never happened.
00:37:27
You would have never got
to see him executed anyhow. I think this was a good call.
00:37:34
NANCY GRACE: Joseph
Mills pleads guilty. But Linda's son, Jeff,
still feels his mother's
00:37:40
killer has escaped justice. I ain't thought
about killing him then because I'm sitting there,
they had two bailiffs,
00:37:47
and there are two cops. And the bigger one
was in the back with the prisoners in the
back, and there's other ones.
00:37:52
It looks like-- it
looked like Barney Fife from the "Andy Griffith Show." I said, I could knock
him over, take his gun,
00:37:56
and I could blow
this guy's head off. And it'd been over in a second. But it was like my mom
put her hands down on me
00:38:04
and said, no, boy, you can
sit right here, you know? One of the many sinister
aspects of this case
00:38:10
is the fact that the football
coach, Mills, continues to take little Tim to
football practice for months
00:38:19
after he murdered
the boy's mother. That's very disturbing. I just-- it makes you
sick to think of that.
00:38:28
How does Tim feel? This guy actually drove him
to football practice and back, even after he had
committed such a crime.
00:38:37
It's just unbelievable. NANCY GRACE: Jeff Slaton
is left to reflect on what he would say to his mother.
00:38:45
If only he could
speak to her today. I'll tell her love
her and hug her back and tell her I was sorry I
didn't hear her that night.
00:38:54
Because I would have
died that night, saving my mom if I could
have heard something.
00:38:59
Because me and my
brother was in the house, and I didn't hear nothing. Tell her I was sorry I didn't
hear nothing to save her,
00:39:05
so I will save her that night. NANCY GRACE: The investigative
team emphasizes just how
00:39:15
vital the use of
genetic genealogy was in solving this cold case. It's been solving
so many cases
00:39:23
and helping these
cases get closure, and that's what cold case
detectives, that's what we do.
00:39:28
That's what we want to
make sure that we have. If it weren't for Mr.
Pciket-- he's still alive today.
00:39:34
He's a 95, 96-year-old man
that still lives in Lakeland. If it wasn't for him, none of
this would have been possible.
00:39:42
He went in there and collected
all this DNA before they really knew what DNA was about.
00:39:47
But he knew if he
collected it, maybe, one day, you know,
it would get solved. So thank God, this man did his
job right that day, you know?
00:39:55
He didn't go in with that
attitude, like a lot of people do in their jobs. He went in there, and
he did his job right.
00:40:00
He did it well, and they
preserved all that evidence. If I can tell anybody
out there that has a loved
00:40:08
one that was murdered,
even 30, 40 years ago, there's still hope. This is the perfect case to show
you that there is still hope.
00:40:21
Hope, that's what the
amazing science of genetic genealogy brings to
so many families,
00:40:28
like single mom Linda Slaton's. Hope, that a killer, even
after 40 years, can be found.
00:40:36
Hope, that not only
crime suspects, but thousands of other
people who have gone nameless
00:40:43
may, someday, be given
their name again. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us here
on "Bloodline Detectives."