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Good evening. I'm Nancy Grace. Tonight, a tragic murder case that goes cold until a major breakthrough
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in forensic science leads "Bloodline Detectives" to finally identify the killer.
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November 1999, Colorado Springs Police receive a call. A body has been found. Clearly, this is suspicious.
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Clearly, there's high concern for foul play. NANCY GRACE: The victim is an employee at Memorial Hospital.
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She's been sex assaulted before a violent death. LEON KELLY: She's got quite a bit of swelling
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to her face, lots of trauma. It had been wrapped several times in this plastic sheeting
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with duct tape. She suffered a brutal death. NANCY GRACE: As the hunt for the killer goes on,
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the investigation hits a wall. Of all the DNA samples that were submitted for testing,
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nobody was a match. NANCY GRACE: But two decades later, all of that changes. They continue to utilize newer technology,
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advanced technology, and DNA to ultimately come up with a suspect. NANCY GRACE: This is the case of Jennifer Watkins, the story
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of how a young mother meets her death and the 20-year investigation to name Jennifer's killer.
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This is "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] November 8, 1999-- it's Monday at the Memorial Hospital
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in Colorado Springs when a maintenance worker makes a terrible discovery. Some elevator repair people had shown up at the hospital
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and had gone to the eighth floor. At that time, there was renovations happening at Memorial Hospital.
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And there was only a few people who had access to that eighth floor. The repair workers noted that as soon as they got there,
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they noticed a foul smell. And they started searching around. When they went to the staircase, they
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said that's when they found what they thought was a body. It's a smell like no other.
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You don't mistake that smell for anything. So once you know what that smell is, it sticks with you for the rest of your life.
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NANCY GRACE: A body is stuffed under a staircase, a staircase that leads to the helicopter pad at the hospital.
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The body wrapped in a sheet, covered with construction plastic, then sealed with duct tape.
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The employees who discovered the body initially contacted Memorial Hospital staff.
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And then a call was placed to the Colorado Springs Police Department. Our patrol officers would have responded on scene.
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And then once they get on scene, they're going to call our Homicide Unit to come out.
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And that's when we started our investigation. NANCY GRACE: Homicide investigators
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arrive on the scene. JIM STINSON: You're looking for clothing, fiber. You're looking for hairs, blood spatter,
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anything that doesn't belong. And if you have any doubt, well, you're grabbing that.
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So a lot of times, you're grabbing things that have nothing to do with the crime itself,
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but they're just within the scene, because once you let that scene go, you can't recreate it.
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And then once the scene was processed, then we'd call the Coroner's Office. And the Coroner's Office would come and remove the body.
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LEON KELLY: The body is wrapped in plastic. So it's not obvious what we're dealing with.
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In those cases, after law enforcement arrives, after the homicide detectives show up,
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clearly this is suspicious. Clearly there's high concern for foul play. So the decision was made early on that the quickest way to get
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that critical piece of information about who this person might be is to go ahead and open
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the plastic at the scene. Now, that's highly irregular. In most cases, we're going to bring
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those remains back to the morgue first before we start to unwrap. In this particular case, the decision was made,
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let's open it now in the presence of everybody. We can document everything. And we can get that critical piece of information going.
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NANCY GRACE: At first, investigators struggle to even identify the victim. LEON KELLY: In this particular, case number one is we got
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to figure out who that body is. The tarp was wrapped fairly tight. So the fact that you could see the outlines of a body,
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you could see where the head was, you could see where the feet likely would be, but you couldn't see any greater
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details of what this person might look like and who they might be. NANCY GRACE: But now investigators
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recognize details they've seen at other crime scenes. LAURI MARTIN: They immediately knew that she
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had been sexually assaulted. When the coroner continued to cut the tarp or the plastic sheeting upwards,
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her shirt was also raised up, exposing her breasts, again, a sign that there had been
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some kind of sexual assault. NANCY GRACE: The victim's body taken for autopsy. RACHEL CRUZ-RODGERS: When they go through the autopsy,
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it's kind of like a secondary scene. Because of the condition of how the body was found,
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they want to preserve that evidence, including not just the external wrapping, but anything
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that's inside as well. As they continue through the autopsy, they'll collect any clothing and then also document any injuries
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or ultimately find out cause and manner of death. But they'll meticulously go through all of that evidence,
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because you don't know what you'll find. It's at that point also that we will collect very critical
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evidence under those very controlled circumstances, that sometimes it points to who did it right now
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and sometimes it may take decades before ultimately that evidence kind of comes to fruition.
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We begin documenting things like height, weight, hair color, any tattoos. And in this particular case, there
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were tattoos present that helped give us an idea of who we thought this might be.
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The young murder victim is fingerprinted. She's got a distinctive tattoo. Police are soon able to identify her as a hospital employee,
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23-year-old Jennifer Watkins. JIM STINSON: Jennifer's clothes were in disarray. So although it appears that by looking at it that there was
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a sexual assault, you're still not sure because sometimes when people kill somebody,
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they'll display the body for shock value. So you have to determine. You have to go in with the autopsy
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and find out if there was a sexual assault, if there is semen present, and just looking for other trace evidence
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on the body itself. LEON KELLY: We begin to clean the body, collecting evidence along the way that could be important, then
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disrobe the body, examining those clothing for any evidence as well. Once we have the body cleaned in much greater visibility,
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then that's when we begin to really dig down and figure out what kind of injuries are present.
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What kind of object, what kind of weapon could have been used here? All that information is being given to law enforcement
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at the time of the autopsy so that all this communication is provided instantaneously.
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So you have to look at the inside of the body to figure out exactly what happened.
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And in this case, we have what we call subscapular hemorrhage, meaning bleeding or bruises that occur below the surface
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of the scalp, essentially overlying the surface of the skull itself. Now, in some cases, people die.
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They fall down. They hit their head. They can get some of this bruising. But in this case, we have that subscapular bruising
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essentially all over the head. Any time you see that, you know that this person had multiple impacts.
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This person has been the victim of multiple blows to the head from different directions.
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That shows a lot of anger directed at this person. And we have to try to find out who is that angry
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and what their motivation was. NANCY GRACE: Investigators began to piece together a murder case.
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LEON KELLY: At the end of all that, we're going to compile all of that information
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in a single report, which we call the autopsy report. And at that point, the forensic pathologist and the coroner
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offers a medical opinion about what they believe happened, based on the totality of the evidence, the scene,
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the autopsy, and the history of which we know about this person as to what is the cause of death, but not just that,
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but the manner of death, the circumstances. What category does this death fall into?
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And in this case, the cause of death was ruled blunt-force head trauma. And the manner of death was ruled a homicide.
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NANCY GRACE: But police are already aware of the name, Jennifer Watkins. She was reported as a missing person over the weekend.
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A missing persons report will indicate when they were last seen compared to when they were actually reported,
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and then also a brief synopsis regarding her, where she was last seen, what she was wearing,
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and her general demographics. NANCY GRACE: The missing person reports on Jennifer
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came in immediately after she disappeared, her family clearly distraught. JIM STINSON: When the phone calls came in,
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one was from Ms. Watkins, Jennifer's mother. And she was reporting that Jennifer
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was missing, that she was supposed to come home from work. And at that time, Jennifer's mother was watching her kids.
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And Jennifer never made it back from work. And so she was concerned about that, because Jennifer,
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from all the accounts that we heard, was a very good mother and would never leave her children like that.
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A mother devoted to her children, a mother who would never abandon them, a mother who has disappeared
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seemingly into thin air-- so far, that's the profile of Jennifer Watkins. But it's just a snapshot.
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As we see next, "Bloodline Detectives" need to find out more about Jennifer Watkins
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and dig even deeper into her life. It's November 1999, Colorado Springs, Colorado,
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police investigating the murder of a young 23-year-old Jennifer Watkins, found wrapped in plastic
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under a hospital stairwell. Jennifer was just a few weeks away from her 24th birthday.
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She was a very young mom. She had a three-year-old son and an 11-month-old daughter.
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Jennifer had always struggled to make ends meet. And getting this job on Memorial Hospital
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was her chance to try to get out on her own, get some money. She worked a day shift during the day from about 9:30
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to 7:30. Jennifer Watkins was working on a plan to solve her money problems and dreamed of giving
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her children a better life. She had aspirations to be becoming a nurse, which is why she was at the hospital
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to begin with as an employee. SEAN MANDEL: Jennifer was a very good employee. She was consistently showing up for work on time.
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She did her job, no complaints. She did not seem to have any problems while she was working at the hospital.
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Her supervisors spoke well of her. Her coworkers spoke highly of her and said that she was very friendly,
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although she didn't have a lot of close relationships. She had only been working at the hospital
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for a short period of time. Kids, from what we saw, loved her. And she loved her kids.
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So she was just your all-American girl who is trying to come up and be successful.
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Her husband, Michael, also worked at Memorial Hospital in housekeeping. But he would go to work at 11 o'clock
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at night to work the overnight shift. That's why her mom would watch the kids, so Michael could sleep during the day.
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NANCY GRACE: Husband Michael also contacted law enforcement. LAURI MARTIN: When Jennifer hadn't gotten home
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at 9 o'clock, Michael started to call Jennifer's mom to ask if she had stopped by to pick up the kids.
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And then he proceeded to call her every 15 minutes until midnight to try to figure
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out where Jennifer was. He then called police to say that his wife had not returned home.
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He had a friend take him to the parking lot where Jennifer parked her car. It's about a mile away from the hospital.
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And employees would sometimes park there as a offsite parking. It was there. It was locked.
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It was exactly how he expected that she would leave it. Then he had the friend take him to the hospital, where
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he confronted Jennifer's supervisor, asked what time she had gotten off. And then he proceeded to call police
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and say that his wife had not returned home from work. NANCY GRACE: Jennifer Watkins' mother and husband
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are now very worried about her. For them, it's all so sudden. The day began like any other.
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That morning was sort of like any other morning. She woke up. She dropped off her kids at her mom's house.
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When she got home, her husband asked her to take him to an appointment. So she called work and said she was going to be about an hour
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late. She got to Memorial Hospital about 10:33. And her shift was just like any other day.
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She worked in the dietary unit in the cafeteria. So she spent that day doing her work.
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And the last time she was seen was between 5:30 and 6:30 by her supervisor. He said that he saw her by the cafeteria.
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She was to go pick up the food trays on the different floors of Memorial Hospital.
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She did that every night. And so he watched her doing that. And that was the last time anybody saw her.
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NANCY GRACE: Crime scene detectives now remove other items from the scene. They took a mobile cabinet that been hanging on the wall.
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They also took a blue t-shirt that was wadded up on top of that cabinet. They took a brown paper bag as part of the evidence.
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They also took the black sheeting that Jennifer's body had been wrapped in, along with the duct tape.
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As far as the scene processing, they would look at everything. So if they located any fingerprints or anything that
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seemed out of the ordinary or related to the scene, they would either document it by photograph
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or just by documentation. And then they would process it immediately. So if they found fingerprints, then they
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would process those fingerprints at that time. Investigators also conduct interviews with members
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of the Memorial Hospital staff. SEAN MANDEL: So we started to conduct our investigation.
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And we started to ask questions and meet with various members of the hospital staff, employees,
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and trying to discover what exactly was going on. RACHEL CRUZ-RODGERS: They interviewed a ton of people--
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hospital staff, not just nurses and doctors, but all types of staff that worked in the hospital,
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and anybody that could possibly have any information regarding who had last seen her, her last time of known location,
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any information that they could have obtained. JIM STINSON: The hospital staff was cooperative.
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They were just as scared as everybody else. This is not something that happens every day.
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I mean, murders in hospitals, that's a newsmaker. And I don't know if it made national news or not.
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But it certainly made it at the state level. So they were cooperative because they
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wanted to make sure they were in a safe environment as well. NANCY GRACE: Detectives are hearing a lot from employees
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at the hospital, some of whom have their own theories about what happened to Jennifer.
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SEAN MANDEL: And throughout the investigation, as we continue to interview hospital staff members,
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we consistently received information about people that they thought could possibly be involved in the homicide,
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information that they gleaned from talking to other people, from talking to coworkers about various people
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that they felt that need to be brought to the attention of the police department.
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NANCY GRACE: Detectives now hone in on Jennifer's last known movements. We know that she took a container full of food
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to one of the floors. And typically what happens is she would leave that there. The nurses would distribute the food.
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And then once the patients finished eating, they'd put it back in the containers
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and then she would go and pick them up again. And she left the container at one of the floors
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and never came to pick it up. And according to her supervisor, that was totally unlike her.
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SEAN MANDEL: It was just really working through the facts, developing leads, and checking off the boxes until we were
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running out of leads and we exhausted all of our investigatory leads. What is immediately clear is that Jennifer Watkins
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died an extremely violent. Death police think they're dealing with a brutal killer.
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As we see next on "Bloodline Detectives," police priority is to track down the killer.
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Colorado Springs Police launched a murder investigation into the death of Jennifer Watkins,
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a gorgeous young hospital worker reported missing early November 1999, Jennifer,
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beat and sex assaulted, then hidden under a staircase at her place of work. In a homicide investigation or with
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any criminal investigation, you start looking at the victim. And then you start to question people that are closest
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to the victim, that have close relationship with the victim, whether it be family members, coworkers, friends,
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other relatives, people that have access to the victim and know a little bit about their life.
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Family members, close friends, they're the ones that have the most knowledge of her.
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So that's where we're going to focus our investigation, just to get a sense of who Jennifer is, because we never
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heard of her prior to that day. SEAN MANDEL: We received a ton of information about people that may have access to the eighth floor
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in the hospital that could have been working there as contractors or construction workers.
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At the time the hospital was under extensive renovations. So trying to work through all that information
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was challenging and difficult. But we started with the family. And then we moved on to coworkers.
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And then we moved on to individuals that would have had access to that eighth floor.
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NANCY GRACE: Investigators cast a wider net. SEAN MANDEL: We went through Crime Stoppers.
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And Crime Stoppers offered a reward for information leading to the arrest of Jennifer's killer.
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We did press releases throughout the investigation, asking for anybody with knowledge
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of the case, knowledge of what might have happened to come forward and bring that information
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to the police department. The amount of tips that police got was very surprising.
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They had anonymous letters, anonymous calls. There were so many rumors circulating about what
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happened to Jennifer. People were calling from Memorial Hospital. People were calling from other hospitals.
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They were friends or friends of friends. Everybody had a story about what may have happened.
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So police had to follow up on all that. There was a guy who called who thought maybe his son had done it.
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So they swabbed the dad to determine that no, it was not his son. But everybody had a story to tell about what
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happened to Jennifer. NANCY GRACE: Jennifer's murder is a big story in Colorado Springs.
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People there are not used to a murder in their own backyard. JIM STINSON: It's a safe town.
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It's, I think, a quiet community. But we, for some reason, we've had our moments of national attention with crazy incidents
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that have happened. Whether it's an active shooting or a band of fugitives that comes through, it seems like there's always
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something every couple of years that gathers people's attention. LEON KELLY: We have some of the greatest natural beauty
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and wonders that this country has to offer. But like every city, and we are a city,
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there's always that underbelly. There's always the drugs and the violence and the things
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that you certainly don't put on the tourist brochure that the average tourist and citizen who came through here
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would never know about. But when you live here and you do the kinds of things that I do for a living, those two things go hand-in-hand.
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And sometimes it is tough to reconcile this gorgeous Garden of the Gods with this majestic mountain
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in the background with the ugliness that every city has. JIM STINSON: Its transient population.
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We have an interstate that runs through town. And so we have a lot of tourists that come here.
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So there's a lot of movement here. NANCY GRACE: Detectives also discovered Michael and Jennifer Watkins' relationship
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has been difficult. The marriage was, I would say, was not ideal, that there was some problems in the past.
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LAURI MARTIN: The relationship between Jennifer and Michael was pretty volatile.
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They had lots of arguments. There were times that Jennifer's mother, Irene, wanted her to call police because Michael
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had gotten violent. But Jennifer never wanted to press any charges. Jennifer confided in one of her very good friends
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that at some point, she would like to leave Michael if she could get her feet on the ground.
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But their relationship was not a good one. Michael was open to the police and told
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them that he and Jennifer had had several affairs on each other. NANCY GRACE: For detectives, husband Michael
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is a suspect from the start. By percentages, murders are done by people who know each other.
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And he presented well as a murder suspect. People would be surprised to discover that most violence
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perpetrated on others is not from drug dealers or evil monsters jumping out of bushes.
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It's, unfortunately, by the people that we know. NANCY GRACE: Investigators start to dig
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into Jennifer Watkins' emotional state at the time she disappears. We'd ask if there's any emotional problems going on,
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if there's any high stressors in her life. We'd get more personal. Are there any marital problems, anything that
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would inspire somebody to become stressed and to act out of character? LAURI MARTIN: When he reported her missing,
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he was very quick to say that he presumed that she was dead, which is part of the reason that police had put him
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under a cloud of suspicion early on, because at that point, Jennifer's body hadn't been found yet.
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JIM STINSON: Initially you're just getting a sense for who they are as people. And then you're listening to what is being said.
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And then as you're talking to them, you're just formulating and playing off that to try to determine if the spouse is involved in this.
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NANCY GRACE: Police soon learned husband Michael has a criminal past. And they want to find out much more about him.
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LAURI MARTIN: Michael had been in and out of jail several times. So he had a pretty lengthy rap sheet.
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Michael's relationship with Jennifer's mom also was not very good. Jennifer's mom told Jennifer several times that she wished
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that she would leave Michael. As far as investigators and the couple's friends are concerned, husband Michael is volatile and unpredictable.
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LAURI MARTIN: Michael's friends and the people who knew him say that he had a short temper.
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He admitted it. He was just very argumentative. And I think some might say that he was somewhat controlling.
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NANCY GRACE: The police locate Jennifer's car. And they hope it provides clues. LAURI MARTIN: One thing that the officers noted
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was that the car had some damage on it and also some red flakes of paint that had come off from something else.
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When the officer asked Michael what that was, Michael said a few weeks ago that Jennifer
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had run into a gas pump. But the officer cast doubt in that story, because he said had that been from a few weeks ago,
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the red flakes of paint that were on the car probably would have blown off. And they hadn't at that point.
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So he brushed them off and they came off just fine. NANCY GRACE: Jennifer's husband, Michael Watkins,
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becomes the subject of a comprehensive investigation. We talked to Michael on a number of occasions.
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He was somewhat difficult to work, with but he did interview and he did sit down and discuss with us every single time
00:26:36
that we asked him to do so. We gave Mr. Watkins a polygraph examination. He passed the polygraph.
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We did not receive any information throughout our investigation that he had been at the hospital at the time Jennifer disappeared.
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But we continued to investigate the case. And Mr. Watkins always remained a person
00:26:57
who we were suspicious of, that we wanted to know more about. But we just did not receive the information that
00:27:04
actually tied him to the case. He had an abrasive personality. There's no doubt about that.
00:27:13
But in hindsight, you can see why. I mean, he was being, for all intents and purposes,
00:27:20
accused of murder. So he was frustrated and angry with us. And he didn't hide that fact.
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He was insulting. He was pushy. He would go to the hospital and try to start his own investigation.
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And he was, I mean, for lack of a better term, he was meddlesome in the investigation.
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NANCY GRACE: The forensics team at the crime scene collects excellent samples, particularly on the plastic
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which wrapped Jennifer's body. RACHEL CRUZ-RODGERS: What they had located on the plastic
00:27:55
was what they identified as possible semen. They also collected her pants. On the pants they also located possible semen.
00:28:05
They identified that the semen on the plastic and the semen on the pants were a match to each other.
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As the investigation unfolds, they'll collect DNA from all different types of people
00:28:17
to see if they can locate a match to that DNA profile. And, unfortunately, of all the DNA samples that were submitted
00:28:24
for testing for that match, that unknown person, nobody was a match. NANCY GRACE: Despite the best efforts of the investigators,
00:28:38
Jennifer's case goes cold. JIM STINSON: What made this challenging is the size of the scene, as being in a hospital
00:28:48
and with the construction going on, the amount of people that we had to interview.
00:28:53
And on top of that, our unit not only was responsible for homicide investigation,
00:28:58
but we investigated felony assaults, too. So those assaults still came in. And other homicides still came in.
00:29:04
So we have to divide our time and try to help where we can. So this one took priority.
00:29:09
But eventually, we had to pull back and take care of our other jobs, too. SEAN MANDEL: No matter how many people we talked to, no matter
00:29:19
how many samples we submitted to a Colorado Bureau of Investigation to compare to our DNA samples
00:29:25
in the case, we just couldn't catch a break and we couldn't identify a suspect in the case.
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NANCY GRACE: For Colorado Springs investigators, Jennifer Watkins' husband is now ruled out as a suspect.
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Jennifer's car also comes up empty in providing any meaningful clue. The case of Jennifer Watkins' murder goes cold.
00:29:49
It's going to take groundbreaking forensic science to find out who murdered Jennifer.
00:29:56
That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." Our case is in Colorado Springs. And police are no closer to finding Jennifer Watkins'
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killer, the 23-year-old mom found murdered in the stairwell of a Colorado Springs hospital
00:30:24
early November 1999. It was an extremely difficult case to work because the hospital was such an enormous place.
00:30:35
And the hospital had so many people that were employed there and would come and go.
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It was the biggest hospital in the city. It was a city-owned hospital at the time.
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And so it was very impactful to the community because a lot of people spent some time at the hospital.
00:30:52
That's where they would go and seek treatment. And to have a body discovered on the eighth floor
00:30:57
of the hospital was very impactful and concerning to not only the police department, but the Colorado
00:31:02
Springs community. NANCY GRACE: There are no matches to any of the DNA samples found at the crime scene.
00:31:12
The investigation into Jennifer's murder goes cold. SEAN MANDEL: We continued to try to interview the people that
00:31:22
were brought to our attention, to collect biological samples to compare to the DNA profiles.
00:31:27
But eventually, we stopped receiving information. We stopped receiving tips. We stopped getting contacts from the community about the case.
00:31:36
And the leads became less and less as the years went on. Homicide detectives take cases personally.
00:31:45
You get to know your victim's family. You get to know your victim. When we exhausted all the leads we had and there was just not
00:31:52
a whole lot more we could do with the case with the technology given then, we would still think about it.
00:31:58
If we could come up with any other leads, any other investigative methods, tools,
00:32:03
we would go pursue that and then see if that took us anywhere. NANCY GRACE: Despite the dead ends,
00:32:10
detectives never give up on Jennifer Watkins' murder. Now they're about to get a brand-new weapon.
00:32:20
RACHEL CRUZ-RODGERS: Genetic genealogy is a tool in which a DNA profile can be researched
00:32:27
against people within the community or all over the world who submit their DNA into various ancestry websites.
00:32:34
That allows us to see if we can find a match to an unknown profile within our investigation
00:32:41
based off of utilizing that. That comes in when we have an unknown profile, all of the samples that were collected
00:32:50
via this investigation and they got matched to our unknown profile were not a match.
00:32:56
Another option is a system called CODIS. People can have their profiles for various reasons
00:33:01
in CODIS, such as being convicted of a felony. That profile gets run against CODIS.
00:33:07
And that also was not a match. So what do you do when your profile doesn't match to anything that you're getting?
00:33:16
That's where genetic genealogy comes in. And it really is a game changer. 2017, Colorado Springs detectives reach out
00:33:26
to Parabon NanoLabs for help in the 1999 murder of Jennifer Watkins, a case that's gone cold.
00:33:36
Parabon has been at the forefront of discovering a genetic weapon called genetic genealogy.
00:33:43
Dr. Leon Kelly, coroner and chief medical examiner, explains its application. In the last five years, there have been incredible advances
00:33:56
in not just identifying DNA matching to other people, but rather lineages of people.
00:34:02
There's so much more DNA available for testing because of voluntary DNA submitted to various commercial labs
00:34:10
for genealogy and people wanting to look into the past and see who they were related to and where they come from.
00:34:18
And in that is incredibly powerful information. Fortunately, sometimes you find out
00:34:23
that the people you're related to you aren't the kinds of people that you probably want to be related to.
00:34:28
NANCY GRACE: So scientists at Parabon began working on the DNA sample. This DNA is about to change everything.
00:34:39
The killer's profile is matched against other DNA profiles which have been put into databases
00:34:46
focused on familial genealogy and family ancestry. They were able to match our unknown profile
00:34:54
to a potential match via genetic genealogy to somebody by the name of Ricky Severt.
00:35:01
NANCY GRACE: Ricky Severt had been in close proximity to Jennifer at the time she disappeared.
00:35:09
And at the time Jennifer Watkins disappeared and then ultimately her body was discovered,
00:35:14
Ricky Severt was an employee of the hospital. It is an almost perfect match. There is nobody else who could have done the crime.
00:35:23
NANCY GRACE: Police are about to achieve what they've been looking for, but there
00:35:28
will be disappointment, too. 2019, Colorado Springs Police reopen their investigation
00:35:48
into the murder of Jennifer Watkins, a young hospital worker murdered November 1999.
00:35:56
The case has been resurrected using genetic genealogy by Parabon NanoLabs. Ricky Severt, the possible killer and a fellow hospital
00:36:07
worker, identified by matching his DNA against profiles found on public genealogy databases.
00:36:19
Ricky Severt was 29 years old. He had worked at the hospital for a little more than a year.
00:36:23
He was a maintenance worker. And his shift was 3 o'clock in the afternoon until 11 o'clock
00:36:28
at night. And he was there the night that Jennifer was murdered. He was questioned very early on in the investigation,
00:36:35
like so many other workers at Memorial Hospital. But he said he did not know who Jennifer was.
00:36:41
He was one of the employees who did have access to the eighth floor. NANCY GRACE: Detectives are more than
00:36:49
anxious to locate Ricky Severt. But they're blindsided by news he was killed in a car crash
00:36:57
almost two years to the day of when Jennifer Watkins is murdered. SEAN MANDEL: So contacting Ricky was out of the question.
00:37:05
But we needed to get DNA somehow, some way. And our detectives were able to get that through an investigation.
00:37:17
LAURI MARTIN: When the investigators contacted the coroner's office, trying to see if they had any DNA on file
00:37:22
after Ricky Severt's accident, the DNA that was left was not usable. So they were really dependent on his daughters
00:37:30
providing that DNA to find an absolute match. Via the family's DNA, we were able to identify
00:37:37
that Ricky Severt was the match to our unknown profile from this case. This is an awful situation for investigators
00:37:47
and for Jennifer's loved ones. Detectives are convinced Ricky Severt killed Jennifer.
00:37:54
But they'll probably never know why. SEAN MANDEL: We didn't get a chance to talk to Mr. Severt.
00:38:02
We didn't have an eyewitness in the case. We didn't receive any information during the investigation about a possible motive.
00:38:11
So really, we just don't know what transpired. NANCY GRACE: Still, in the case of Jennifer Watkins,
00:38:20
the availability of revolutionary new science, like genetic genealogy, is a game changer.
00:38:29
SEAN MANDEL: They never gave up on the case. And they continued to utilize newer technology,
00:38:34
advanced technology and DNA to ultimately come up with a suspect and close this case
00:38:41
with identifying a suspect who was responsible for Jennifer's murder. These are folks who are brilliant and dedicated
00:38:50
and care. And so it doesn't surprise me that despite time, none of them ever gave up.
00:38:58
The technology they used and the science they used is amazing. You work for the victims.
00:39:08
So to be able to provide those answers for them, it's just-- it's hopefully you just help them,
00:39:14
help them with their closure, if you can even provide that to them. SEAN MANDEL: It was a very tragic case.
00:39:23
Jennifer was a young, loving mother of two who had a full life ahead of her. And it ended tragically.
00:39:31
I feel extremely, extremely bad for the family, for Jennifer's mother, her brother
00:39:38
and sisters, and the kids that had to grow up without their mother. They were just infants at the time.
00:39:44
And it was just a very, very sad situation for everybody involved. When I talked to Jennifer Watkins daughter
00:39:53
after they discovered who had killed her, I asked her, does this give you peace?
00:39:58
Do you feel like you can close that door? And she said no, it doesn't give me peace.
00:40:06
She said that door on who killed my mom has been shut, but there's a new door that's open.
00:40:13
What happened? Why did it happen? Why did he kill my mom? And she said I will never be able to ask him that.
00:40:22
He died before he could get arrested. But I think his justice will come in another realm.
00:40:29
Advancements in forensic science have been stunning. And genetic genealogy is just one example.
00:40:37
Maybe someday the brilliant scientists who created these amazing scientific breakthroughs
00:40:43
will also be able to tell us not only how someone was murdered, but why. When it comes to homicide, very often
00:40:53
why continues to be the evasive and unsolvable mystery. I'm Nancy Grace. And this has been "Bloodline Detectives."
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