00:00:00
[TENSE MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Brown County,
Texas, May 13, 2016. 25-year-old Rhonda
Chantay Blankinship
00:00:20
disappears without a trace. Any time you have a situation
where someone has gone missing,
00:00:28
in the back of
your mind, there's always the concern that
something terrible has happened.
00:00:33
NANCY GRACE: Police and the
local community launch a search for missing Rhonda Chantay.
00:00:39
MICHAEL MURRAY: She's
such a sweet girl. Everybody wanted to
do their best to help
00:00:42
and try to find Chantay. NANCY GRACE: Friends and family
continue to search for Rhonda.
00:00:47
Days later, their
worst fears come true. [PHONE RINGS] SCOTT BIRD: Getting
to the cellar
00:01:00
is when the awful things
start happening, when we see Chantay laying on the steps.
00:01:06
MICHAEL MURRAY: The level of
injuries inflicted on her, it was beyond overkill. NANCY GRACE: Police cannot
immediately identify a suspect.
00:01:15
We had no idea who
committed this crime. JASON SHEA: All leads
had been followed up.
00:01:20
Tips slowed down. NANCY GRACE: Police
will eventually turn to a groundbreaking
new forensic science
00:01:28
to help them catch a killer. We had already spent
a lot of money on DNA. Our budget was empty.
00:01:36
NANCY GRACE: This is the
story of the brutal murder of a very vulnerable,
at-risk young woman,
00:01:44
and the search for her killer. I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC]
00:02:16
Brown County,
Texas, May 13, 2016. Local authorities are notified
a young woman goes missing.
00:02:25
It's 25-year-old Rhonda
Blankinship, known to family and friends as Chantay. SCOTT BIRD: She lived
in a community called
00:02:35
the North Lake community. It's up around the lake. Probably a couple thousand
people live out there.
00:02:41
There's Tamarack
Mountain, Thunderbird Bay, and Harbor Point. They're all connected.
00:02:46
And it's-- it's just a
community where people live to be close to the lake. NANCY GRACE: Brown County
sheriffs are notified two days
00:02:56
after Chantay Blankinship
vanishes from her small lakeside community. JASON SHEA: In May 15 of 2016,
I was contacted by the Brown
00:03:06
County Sheriff's Office
and requested to assist with a missing person. Everyone knew and loved
Chantay, everybody that I had
00:03:16
talked to that had seen her. She was always
waving at everybody who was driving down the road.
00:03:21
She was always smiling. She was a joy to be around. She was just a good person. NANCY GRACE: Chantay,
facing lifelong challenges
00:03:32
because of injuries she
suffered in childhood. ELISHA BIRD: Chantay was
unable to care for herself well
00:03:42
enough to live independently. It had mostly come about as
a result of her childhood,
00:03:49
and some abuse that she had
suffered as a young child. NANCY GRACE: Despite
her challenges,
00:03:55
Chantay Blankinship has a
steady presence in her life-- her grandfather, Charlie.
00:04:02
He takes responsibility, and he
cares for her and her siblings. ELISHA BIRD: Charlie had taken
over responsibility for her,
00:04:11
even though Charlie
was quite old himself. MICHAEL MURRAY: He
was a very neat guy
00:04:16
to talk to, and interesting,
and had a nice background. He was former law enforcement.
00:04:21
Charlie was a stand-up guy. And I think Charlie
would have did anything he could for his family.
00:04:28
I would describe her as
kind of like, you know, your four- or five-year-old,
in terms of abilities.
00:04:34
It'd be easy to trick Chantay. Easy to, you know, fool her. But she was just such
a good-hearted person,
00:04:40
and she would trust anybody. Chantay's sweetness,
kindness, ended up being her demise in the
end, of her willingness
00:04:48
to trust somebody. [SOMBER MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: May 13, 2016. Chantay Blankinship goes
out for an evening walk.
00:04:58
Her grandpa becomes concerned
when Chantay doesn't come home. JASON SHEA: Chantay
went for her normal walk
00:05:06
that she normally
does in the evening. ELISHA BIRD: She went to the
cafe that she liked to frequent.
00:05:12
She walked around in
that area that evening and was seen by several people. MICHAEL MURRAY: The family
got worried right away,
00:05:20
and Charlie took it upon
himself to drive around all night looking for her
in an effort to find her,
00:05:24
hoping that, you know, maybe
she was just hanging out with a friend or wandered off.
00:05:29
JASON SHEA: Mr. Barnett
started looking for her and couldn't find her, and
then contacted law enforcement.
00:05:34
MICHAEL MURRAY:
The law enforcement took into consideration all
the factors that existed here,
00:05:38
with her intellectual
disabilities and her lack of ability to
really live independently.
00:05:45
ELISHA BIRD: When
she went missing, no one really had any idea
where she disappeared from.
00:05:52
Nobody saw the moment when she
left her neighborhood community. And so it just appeared
that a person who
00:06:04
had an intellectual disability
had just disappeared, and no one had any
idea where she went.
00:06:10
The Friday night when
she was last seen, well, just by coincidence the
pastor of North Lake Community
00:06:17
Church, Ron Keener, and
his wife Elaine, well, they had been out driving around.
00:06:22
They saw her walking. They waved at her,
and she waved at them. That would have been the last
time that they ever saw her.
00:06:29
ELISHA BIRD: May 13, the
search was fairly limited because nobody really
realized that she
00:06:36
was completely missing until
it became late in the evening. On May 14, the community started
to get more heavily involved
00:06:47
in the search and it expanded. JASON SHEA: That is remarkable. That just shows the
tight-knit community
00:06:52
that we have here in Brown
County, that everybody started looking for her. There were groups
that were providing
00:06:58
food and water for searchers. Everybody came together for a
common goal, to find Chantay.
00:07:06
ELISHA BIRD: Any time you have a
situation where someone has gone missing, especially someone
with the disabilities
00:07:13
that Chantay had,
that's always the fear, that the worst has happened. You hope and pray
that they'll be found
00:07:21
and nothing will be wrong. But in the back of
your mind, there's always the concern that
something terrible has happened.
00:07:29
NANCY GRACE: The massive
search by members of this close-knit community
goes on into a second day.
00:07:36
As that day comes
to a close, friends and family cannot ignore-- something awful must
have happened to Chantay.
00:07:46
SCOTT BIRD: Part of
the search party, Charlie Radle and his
wife, decided to go away from the immediate area.
00:07:54
They found an old
abandoned house which kids would go to for parties. It was known as the
party house out in May.
00:08:04
MICHAEL MURRAY: Two volunteers
came to the old party house. The driver decided he was
going to pull in there,
00:08:09
and they would do a
check real quick there. And so as he pulled up to
the gate, it's a locked gate.
00:08:14
There had been
fresh tire tracks. So he could see that somebody
had been there recently as well.
00:08:19
So he got up to the
gate to climb over, noticed a big clump of
hair, obviously stood out.
00:08:25
When they were standing
there looking at the fence, they saw a multi-colored
bracelet and then they went
00:08:31
into the property through
some tall weeds to the house to try to locate Chantay.
00:08:37
ELISHA BIRD: They kind
of just followed a trail and saw a cellar that was
overgrown and covered over,
00:08:45
but thought, maybe that's a
place that we should look. Maybe she fell down in there.
00:08:50
Maybe if something bad
happened, maybe she is there. SCOTT BIRD: Getting
to the cellar
00:08:55
is when the awful things
start happening, when we see Chantay laying on the steps.
00:09:01
MICHAEL MURRAY: He had opened
the cellar and looked in there, and that's where Chantay's
body was lying with her head
00:09:07
further down into the cellar
and her feet more up close to the top. So obviously appearing that
Chantay had been dumped down
00:09:16
into the cellar at that point. [PHONE RINGS] SCOTT BIRD: That's when my
phone rang, that we didn't
00:09:32
have a missing person anymore. We had a murder. NANCY GRACE: Tragedy strikes
this tight-knit community.
00:09:41
A missing person case is
now a murder investigation, with very few clues. That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives."
00:09:50
[DRAMATIC MUSIC] [DRAMATIC MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Brown
County, Texas, 2016. Law enforcement and the
community search for a missing
00:10:06
25-year-old woman, Rhonda
Blankinship, known as Chantay to family and friends. Chantay never comes back
from an evening walk,
00:10:17
and then the
discovery of her body launches a murder investigation. SCOTT BIRD: She was unclothed
from the waist down.
00:10:27
You could see massive
injuries to her face and neck and upper torso
that was not clothed.
00:10:36
You could see scrapes and
bruises down her legs. Um, all her clothes were
thrown in there as well.
00:10:43
She was just bloody from
massive trauma to her body. JASON SHEA: We found a lawnmower
blade close to the body,
00:10:53
and it appeared that that might
have been the murder weapon. MICHAEL MURRAY: Chantay's
of a slight build.
00:10:59
She's less than 5 foot tall,
you know, maybe 90 pounds at the most. And to see the level of
injuries inflicted on her,
00:11:06
it was certainly over the top. You could just see,
you know, the person that did it wasn't
just trying to kill her
00:11:14
but was definitely
making a statement. And it was beyond overkill. [TENSE MUSIC]
00:11:22
NANCY GRACE: The Brown
County Sheriff's Office has a complex homicide
investigation on its hands,
00:11:27
and they have limited resources
to handle it effectively. We are a small jurisdiction,
so we don't have a crime
00:11:37
scene team or a coroner. In our jurisdiction,
it would be more likely that the law enforcement
officers and the investigators
00:11:49
responded, and that they
handle their own crime scene investigation. JASON SHEA: Everything's
important at a crime
00:11:57
scene, because you don't know
what will be important later on. So everything that is
collected, from the lawnmower
00:12:03
blade to her clothing
to her body-- anything that would
connect whoever did this to this horrible
crime is collected.
00:12:13
SCOTT BIRD: There
was a lot of hair that had been pulled
out of her head, from the fence all
the way to the cellar.
00:12:21
Of course, we collect
blood evidence for DNA. There was quite a bit of
blood evidence we found.
00:12:28
It had rained since Chantay's
body had been dumped in there. You couldn't see
a lot of it, but
00:12:35
in the corners and
cracks and places, we were able to find blood. MICHAEL MURRAY: Chantay was
unclothed from the waist down,
00:12:43
clearly indicative
that there had been some kind of sexual
assault that had taken
00:12:46
place as part of this crime. In this case, there
was also a shoe print that was across
Chantay's chest that
00:12:53
was a pretty distinct pattern. ELISHA BIRD: Autopsies
are always important, so that when we go to court
we can prove a cause of death
00:13:02
and prove what happened. In this particular
case, the autopsy was critical because there
were a lot of injuries
00:13:10
that we didn't know
what caused them and we were uncertain
where they came from or how they got on the body.
00:13:20
MICHAEL MURRAY: She obviously
had several blows to her head from what appeared to be
consistent with the lawnmower
00:13:26
blade. She had been stomped on. You could see the clear
indication of that through the shoe
prints left on Chantay.
00:13:35
And then, of course, the
recovery of the semen likewise showed the sexual
assault occurring as well.
00:13:42
ELISHA BIRD: She was beaten
to death, in layman's terms. The medical examiner determined
that her larynx had been crushed
00:13:53
and that she suffered blunt
force trauma to her head and body, and that the
combination of those things
00:14:00
killed her. [SOMBER MUSIC] SCOTT BIRD: We
talked with Charlie and Michelle, her mother.
00:14:10
We told her that she was
killed with blunt force trauma, and she was sexually assaulted.
00:14:17
We did not tell any
other information. And that's hard to do, looking
at a mother and a grandfather
00:14:26
who have a lot of questions. But we can't tell
them because they will tell somebody
else in the family, who
00:14:32
will then tell somebody else. And we've got to keep
that information guarded. JASON SHEA: You never
know what kind of reaction
00:14:40
you're going to get
from a loved one when you tell them that their
family member has been killed
00:14:44
or is deceased. It's a hard thing
because there's lots of emotions involved in that.
00:14:52
NANCY GRACE: Chantay
Blankinship's family now has the heartbreaking
task to plan her funeral
00:15:00
and say goodbye to
their loved one. It was devastating to
the community to find out that she had been murdered.
00:15:09
Not only murdered, but
murdered in such a brutal way. Even without the
community knowing
00:15:15
the details of the
murder, they knew that it needed to be a closed casket. They knew that she had been
dumped in a rural location.
00:15:26
And it was so much more
traumatic because of how violent it was, that the
damage to the community
00:15:33
from going through that type
of a situation was extreme. NANCY GRACE: The extent
of Chantay's injuries
00:15:45
reveals the enormous
suffering she endured before she finally dies. Meanwhile, homicide
investigators
00:15:56
are overwhelmed with
well-meaning tips from the local community. ELISHA BIRD: There
were so many leads
00:16:04
and so many different tips that
were given to law enforcement. The hardest part, I
think, was sorting
00:16:12
through all of the
different tips and leads and eliminating people. SCOTT BIRD: We had tips
from people from New York
00:16:20
to here to all over the place. We had a psychic call
us and try to tell us she was killed by a woman.
00:16:28
NANCY GRACE: One of the
first steps for investigators is to talk to
Chantay's boyfriend.
00:16:34
He became a suspect during
a portion of the case, for a while. They had been dating
for a couple of years
00:16:41
and he was obviously
a suspect very quickly in the investigation. SCOTT BIRD: He had
an airtight alibi.
00:16:51
He was at work and
that work had cameras, so we knew where he was the
day and the evening Chantay
00:16:57
went missing. MICHAEL MURRAY: Any time you
start an investigation like that, you want to be thorough.
00:17:03
An obvious starting point would
be the sex offender database. ELISHA BIRD: Law
enforcement look
00:17:08
at anyone in the community in
that area, who would have known Chantay, that she would
have trusted enough to get
00:17:17
into a vehicle with,
because Chantay was not likely to go with
someone that she didn't know.
00:17:23
So initially the focus was
on people close to her. JASON SHEA: May
20, 2016, there was
00:17:31
a funeral at North Lake Church. Appeared to be about
over 400 people attended, with law enforcement
also having a presence there.
00:17:41
ELISHA BIRD: During the
funeral, law enforcement was looking to see if there was
anyone at the funeral who might
00:17:47
be acting in a way that would
give us a clue about who had committed the crime. NANCY GRACE:
Investigators are now
00:17:54
considering two possibilities. One, Chantay's killer is
someone she knew, and two,
00:18:01
the suspect is an
outsider, someone simply passing
through Brown County who lures Chantay to her death.
00:18:10
ELISHA BIRD: The DNA was sent
to a forensic laboratory, where a DNA profile was obtained
for the unknown suspect.
00:18:21
NANCY GRACE: Investigators
hope they can identify Chantay's killer with
the DNA sample recovered
00:18:27
from a sex assault kit. ELISHA BIRD: That DNA profile
was entered into the CODIS
00:18:34
system to see if a
match could be obtained, so that we could determine a
suspect to look into further.
00:18:42
JASON SHEA: CODIS is the
Combined DNA Index System. So all unsolved
crimes, DNA profiles
00:18:49
that are collected in those are
uploaded into CODIS and compared to known offenders.
00:18:55
SCOTT BIRD: We were looking
at some of the people we deal with quite
frequently that we
00:19:00
knew had contact with Chantay. If we had any kind of feeling
that somebody wasn't being
00:19:07
completely honest, the guys
would ask for a DNA sample just to see if they agreed,
or if maybe they
00:19:14
had something else to hide. We were really looking
for that one person to tell us, no, you're
not getting my DNA.
00:19:21
If you had something
to hide, then maybe you wouldn't give your DNA. ELISHA BIRD: Unfortunately,
there were no hits through CODIS
00:19:29
for any DNA matches,
and there were no hits through CODIS on any
familial DNA matches either.
00:19:38
NANCY GRACE: All the initial
suspects are ruled out. Investigators turn to
the public, determined
00:19:44
to get a break in the case. ELISHA BIRD: When they offered
the financial reward for tips,
00:19:53
there were several Crime
Stoppers tips that were provided to law enforcement. None of them panned
out upon investigation.
00:20:03
NANCY GRACE: Despite the Crime
Stoppers reward and DNA testing of potential suspects,
detectives have
00:20:10
little to nothing to go on. ELISHA BIRD: Since
all of the DNA samples that were
provided for top suspects
00:20:19
came back not matching anyone,
and so we started wondering, could it have been someone
who is not from this area,
00:20:29
who was traveling through? Especially given the
gruesomeness of it, there was a real
concern that this
00:20:36
was someone who had potentially
murdered and raped before. And so part of the investigation
was thinking about,
00:20:45
are there other crimes similar
to this that have happened in other locations, by
someone who travels around
00:20:52
and commits these
types of crimes? After that DNA profile
was entered into CODIS,
00:20:57
and there was no match,
tips slowed down. It's not like the
community lost sight of it.
00:21:03
They were just-- all leads had
been followed up at that time. ELISHA BIRD: Almost a full year
and a half where we had no idea
00:21:12
who committed this crime. It was considered
unsolved in our office, waiting for further
investigation.
00:21:22
And it was in a cold case
status for law enforcement, just looking for some tip to
be able to break it back open
00:21:33
and be able to restart the case. MICHAEL MURRAY: A year out,
when they were commemorating
00:21:39
or memorializing a year having
passed since Chantay's death, I know that that kind of hit
everybody and took everybody
00:21:46
back as a reminder
of, we need to double down and get back to looking. Is there something
else we can be doing,
00:21:52
and relooking at
some of these stuff that's already been looked at? When we come back to
"Bloodline Detectives,"
00:21:59
investigators now turn
to a new forensic science to help them catch a killer. [DRAMATIC MUSIC]
00:22:11
[DRAMATIC MUSIC] [TENSE MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Detectives
in Brown County, Texas, investigating the violent
murder and brutal sex assault
00:22:24
of a vulnerable young woman,
25-year-old Rhonda Chantay Blankinship, her brutalized
body discovered in an abandoned
00:22:36
cellar on May 15, 2016. Investigators have
very few leads, so they turn to cutting-edge
forensic science
00:22:47
to help crack the case. There was a
television show that had caught one of the
deputies' attention,
00:22:55
and that deputy brought it to
the attention of investigator Scott Bird, that there is the
possibility of doing DNA testing
00:23:06
using something that
was new to us, called phenotyping, to develop
a picture of the suspect.
00:23:14
Kind of like a crime scene
sketch photo from an eyewitness, but using DNA to
create that picture.
00:23:23
SCOTT BIRD: So I had
to get on the computer just to try to wrap my
head and see what it is.
00:23:28
I read quite a bit
about it and thought, this could be very helpful. And I called Parabon and spoke
with the president of Parabon,
00:23:39
and tried to get
him to explain to me how he could take DNA and get
me a computer image of a person.
00:23:47
I was very skeptical, so I asked
him to give me some references, give me law enforcement
agencies that
00:23:53
have actually used your system. CECE MOORE: Phenotyping
is predicting somebody's physical traits and
their ancestry from their DNA
00:24:02
alone. It is looking at hundreds of
thousands of genetic markers across the genome,
called SNPs, that
00:24:08
can help to predict
someone's eye color, skin color, hair color,
and other physical traits,
00:24:14
like shape face. ELISHA BIRD: Phenotyping
was new in our field and the cost was a lot,
especially for a small agency.
00:24:28
There's no budget or line item
for doing phenotype testing. SCOTT BIRD: We had already
spent a lot of money on DNA
00:24:38
and our budget was empty. So I went to the district
attorney and said, look, will you split this with our
office so we can get this done?
00:24:49
Well, the district attorney
had never heard of that, or was not real familiar
with phenotyping either.
00:24:56
So he was skeptical of whether
it be admissible in court, whether it would work or not,
and he was hesitant on it.
00:25:05
It took a while of me
talking to both the sheriff and the district attorney
to get them both to agree
00:25:12
to split the cost of it. ELISHA BIRD: When you
have a cold case-- especially in a world where you
are convinced that someone who
00:25:21
does something that
brutal, this isn't going to be their only crime, it's
not going to be the only time
00:25:27
they hurt someone-- any expense that
you can possibly pay is worth it to try to figure
out who committed the crime,
00:25:36
and to hold them
responsible, and to protect the community from whatever
they may do in the future.
00:25:42
MICHAEL MURRAY: When you start
thinking outside the box, and you pick a
new-type technology,
00:25:48
it's like you have to evaluate,
is this the best new technology for us to take a chance on?
00:25:54
So it's not the
skeptical of the science. It's just, is that the best,
you know, angle for this?
00:26:00
And I think in the end we
decided it was, and so decided to move forward on that.
00:26:05
JASON SHEA: The sheriff's
office contacted the lab and requested SNP testing. And so that STR profile, or that
DNA extract from the same exam,
00:26:16
was sent to Parabon
for the phenotyping. ELISHA BIRD: That
DNA evidence that was collected through the
swabs of Chantay's body
00:26:26
was then submitted to Parabon,
through methods that contained documentation about how the
evidence was transferred,
00:26:36
who transferred it, and
making sure that it wasn't altered or changed in any way.
00:26:43
SCOTT BIRD: When we
gave them the permission or gave them the
authorization to do this,
00:26:48
I believe I had the image
in about three weeks. CECE MOORE: November 6,
2017, Parabon reached out
00:26:56
to the agency to let them know
that the snapshot, phenotyping, imaging, and predictions
were complete.
00:27:01
SCOTT BIRD: I'm in my office
and I get an email from Parabon. I open it and it gives,
first, a description
00:27:08
of what the person's
eye color would be, whether they have freckles. Are their earlobes attached?
00:27:14
What color is their hair? They couldn't give
us big things. Couldn't give us age.
00:27:19
Of course, can't
give you weight. And then you scroll
down and there is a computer-generated
image from DNA
00:27:28
of a white male with a
few freckles, light skin tone, at about age 25. ELISHA BIRD: It's kind of hard
to express what you feel when
00:27:40
you see just the composite
sketch by itself, because you don't have any
measure or any standard
00:27:48
to say this is accurate
or this is not accurate. You're just relying
on this technology.
00:27:55
It sounds great and it
sounds really exciting, but you've never seen
it in action before.
00:28:01
So it-- it looks like a person. It looks like a young man
that could be anybody that you
00:28:08
could run into on the street. STEVE NASH: The sheriff's
office had sent out word to the local
media to ask if we
00:28:15
could be there for
this press conference related to the Chantay case. So we got there
and it was myself
00:28:22
and some of the
local radio people. TV media was-- was there. That's when Sheriff
Hill displayed what
00:28:30
the suspect might look like. JASON SHEA: Once that
snapshot was released we had some tips
that had come in,
00:28:38
and they believed they
had identified whoever the potential suspect might be. CECE MOORE: When law enforcement
showed the snapshot phenotype
00:28:47
to Chantay's family,
one of her brothers stated that it looked like a
young man named Ryan Riggs.
00:28:53
He was a 21-year-old
neighbor of theirs. He wasn't close to the family,
but he had attended school
00:29:00
with some of Chantay's
family members and he was an acquaintance
of her current boyfriend.
00:29:05
ELISHA BIRD: The number of
people that confirmed that this looked like Ryan Riggs, not even
as part of the investigation,
00:29:15
just as part of the community
chatter that was going on, it felt like confirmation before
I even saw the photo of Ryan
00:29:29
next to the composite photo. NANCY GRACE: Finally, bloodline
detectives get a huge break.
00:29:35
The use of DNA phenotyping
produces an image that Chantay's relatives and
neighbors immediately recognize.
00:29:47
Police now have a prime
suspect, Ryan Riggs. Who's he? That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives."
00:29:55
[DRAMATIC MUSIC] [DRAMATIC MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Brown
County, Texas, 2017. Bloodline detectives
have a breakthrough
00:30:09
in the search for a killer. A new forensic science called
DNA phenotyping identifies
00:30:16
a suspect in the brutal rape
and murder of 25-year-old Chantay Blankinship. The suspect's name, Ryan Riggs.
00:30:27
SCOTT BIRD: When we
pulled up his social media and saw a picture of
him, it was nearly
00:30:33
identical to the Parabon
phenotyping image that they gave us. Ryan was from
that same community.
00:30:40
So he lived out there
close to Chantay, had a family that lived
out there at the lake,
00:30:44
and somebody that obviously
had known family members. The brother of Chantay had been
friends with him at some point.
00:30:50
They had went to
school together. So he definitely had the
connections, would have known
00:30:54
Chantay. Chantay would have been familiar
with him, which would have given him an easy in at Chantay.
00:31:01
JASON SHEA: When
he was a juvenile, he had stolen a gun
from a residence. So really, that's about
the only criminal history
00:31:09
that we had on him. [TENSE MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Now investigators
must obtain, somehow,
00:31:17
a sample of Ryan Riggs's DNA. At this point,
they don't want him to know he's the prime suspect.
00:31:24
They come up with a
plan to obtain Riggs's DNA without tipping him off. MICHAEL MURRAY:
It was discovered
00:31:31
that within the community,
he'd been dumping bags of trash out in the community without
properly disposing of them.
00:31:37
So we thought,
you know, it would be a good way to get him
in front of some officers
00:31:43
to talk with him. SCOTT BIRD: He did violate
the law by dumping trash, so we got an arrest warrant
for him for illegal dumping.
00:31:51
We were just going to
arrest him at his home, bring him into the office,
get him into the office,
00:31:57
and then I was going
to interview him. Officers went out there. He was home, but he would
not answer the door.
00:32:04
He said he knew when
he saw four deputies knocking on his front door
that we were on to him.
00:32:10
And he went on the run. ELISHA BIRD: Ryan was
gone for about three days, and no one knew where he
was during that time frame.
00:32:22
NANCY GRACE: Brown
County sheriffs began to track down Ryan Riggs. JASON SHEA: We did
have a phone number.
00:32:29
And we were going to
start using cell phone data to try to
identify and locate where this individual was at.
00:32:36
SCOTT BIRD: Everybody
in the office, on patrol, everybody
was looking for Ryan. My wife and I were in the
kitchen fixing supper,
00:32:45
about to start cooking, and I
look over and my phone's ringing and it's the sheriff.
00:32:50
I answer the phone, as
I always do, hey, boss. And he said, get to the office. Ryan Riggs has just confessed
at the church in North Lake.
00:33:00
NANCY GRACE: It's a very
bizarre, but welcome, twist for investigators. Has the prime suspect in
Chantay Blankinship's murder
00:33:10
really confessed? And is he really the killer? We find out next on
"Bloodline Detectives."
00:33:18
[DRAMATIC MUSIC] [DRAMATIC MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Brown
County, Texas, 2017. A year has passed since the
gruesome murder of 25-year-old
00:33:36
Rhonda Chantay Blankinship. An advanced forensic science
called DNA phenotyping IDs a prime suspect named Ryan
Riggs, and Riggs is on the run.
00:33:50
Before police track him down, he
makes a very bizarre confession. CECE MOORE: On
November 15, 2017,
00:33:58
Ryan went to North
Lake Community Church, stood up in front of the
congregation, and proclaimed,
00:34:05
I am a murderer. I killed Chantay Blankinship. JASON SHEA: Ryan wanted to
confess to the congregation.
00:34:11
So I think the pastor
allowed him to do that. Maybe that he just needed
to get that off his chest.
00:34:17
I was surprised
that he did that. I'd never seen a
confession, or somebody get in front of a church and
make a statement like that.
00:34:27
MICHAEL MURRAY: Certainly,
he had all the makings that you would see anytime you
look at serial killer studies.
00:34:33
He had that seed to be
a serial killer one day. I think the only thing that kept
that from coming to fruition
00:34:39
was the fact that he got
caught on his first time out. NANCY GRACE: 21-year-old Ryan
Riggs is taken into custody.
00:34:46
Investigators want to
know exactly what happened the day Chantay is murdered. JASON SHEA: Ryan came in.
00:34:53
We set him down. This was a
non-custodial interview. He wasn't under arrest. We wanted to know
everything we could get.
00:35:01
We wanted to know
how, why, when, and where that
this all happened. SCOTT BIRD: I told him,
I understand you have
00:35:10
something you want to tell us. And he just started talking of
how he killed Chantay, how he
00:35:16
was a demon, how he'd always
wanted to rape and murder, and with no emotion at all.
00:36:40
MICHAEL MURRAY: When
he saw Chantay standing by the mailboxes, he figured
that was a good, easy time
00:36:46
to get her, and so he
took advantage of the fact that they knew each other. JASON SHEA: He
picked her up, asked
00:36:52
her if she wanted to go listen
to some music in his truck. They drove up to a
secluded area and sat
00:36:59
there and listened to music. SCOTT BIRD: He put
his arm around her, and then he strangled
her unconscious.
00:37:05
He said he then
sexually assaulted her. And he knew he had to
get rid of her body,
00:37:12
so he took her out to
that abandoned house where her body was
found in a cellar.
00:37:18
ELISHA BIRD: She did
survive the initial attack. He was clear in his interview
that she was still moving
00:37:28
after the initial brutality. MICHAEL MURRAY: He
felt that he needed to finish her off to make sure
that she didn't go tell on him.
00:37:36
When he got her out of the
truck at that abandoned house, he heard her breathing.
00:37:41
And she was moving, so he
knew she was still alive. He first tried to
cut her throat,
00:37:47
but his knife was dull
so it wouldn't cut. And he remembered the lawnmower
blade in the back of his truck,
00:37:54
so he took it out and
beat her to death with it. MICHAEL MURRAY: In
that process, he
00:37:59
admitted that he had
stomped her chest as just part of that overall effort,
and trying to inflict
00:38:04
enough injuries to her
to make sure that she was dead by the time he left her. SCOTT BIRD: I believe he had
fantasized about it for years
00:38:11
and he knew Chantay
would be an easy target. NANCY GRACE:
Investigators now have
00:38:18
their own version of Ryan
Riggs's church house confession. Local prosecutors prepare
to take him to trial.
00:38:27
We talked through all of
the options that we had, whether to go forward
with the death penalty
00:38:35
or to choose to resolve the case
through an agreement for life without parole. Once you hear the
confession, the next half
00:38:44
of that investigation
is fixing to start. And that's delving into
the background and history
00:38:48
of this particular
defendant to see what the real likelihood of us,
you know, uncovering enough bad
00:38:54
acts to actually make him one
of the worst of the worst, to qualify him for
the death penalty.
00:39:00
ELISHA BIRD: Ryan pled
guilty on February 15 of 2019 to capital murder and
received life without parole.
00:39:08
That means that he will
never be able to leave the prison system in Texas. SCOTT BIRD: It was
a mixed reaction.
00:39:17
We had a lot of people wondering
why the death penalty was not sought, but there were also a
lot of people that were just
00:39:24
thankful that he
was going to prison and he is not eligible
to ever get out. He will die in prison.
00:39:33
[SOMBER MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Thanks
to DNA phenotyping, investigators can now solve a
case once thought unsolvable.
00:39:45
CECE MOORE: I think
it's very likely Ryan would have killed again, just
based on his own statements.
00:39:49
And so in this case, I
feel confident saying that the snapshot
phenotype predictions got
00:39:55
a very violent criminal
off the streets and potentially saved lives. SCOTT BIRD: It solved
the case for us.
00:40:03
I don't know how much
longer it would have taken for us to
find Ryan, but it's the one that led us to Ryan.
00:40:13
NANCY GRACE: It's
written in the Bible, the Lord works in
mysterious ways. Ryan Riggs and
Chantay Blankinship
00:40:21
attended the same church,
the same church where Ryan Riggs confessed to
the entire congregation
00:40:29
he killed Chantay. The same church whose
pastor ministered to Riggs in his guilt, and to
Chantay's mother in her grief.
00:40:44
At his sentencing,
Chantay's mother showed her own compassion. She looked Ryan Riggs
in the eye and said,
00:40:51
amazingly, I forgive you. But I don't. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us here
on "Bloodline Detectives."
00:41:03
[DRAMATIC MUSIC] [DRAMATIC MUSIC] [THEME MUSIC]