00:00:00
[MUSIC PLAYING] NANCY GRACE: San Diego,
California, 1969. The body of Mary Scott, a lovely
23-year-old mother of two,
00:00:21
is found by a friend after Mary
fails to show up for work one day. What they saw must have
been horrific for them.
00:00:30
Mary was basically
spread-eagled on her back in the living room floor,
nude from the waist down,
00:00:38
legs and arms spread in what
we call the classic rape murder position. NANCY GRACE: Police
pieced together details
00:00:45
about what happened that night. Somebody broke down her door. They broke her jaw, they ripped
off her dress, they raped her,
00:00:55
and they strangled her
until she was dead. NANCY GRACE: Investigators
failed to establish any leads.
00:01:02
Mary Scott's case
goes cold for decades. There's not a moment
I don't think about her.
00:01:10
I just wish I had known her. I remember her. NANCY GRACE: This is the story
of how a new forensic tool,
00:01:18
genetic genealogy,
could give Mary Scott's family the peace they
deserve after 50 long years.
00:01:28
I'm Nancy Grace. This is Bloodline Detectives. [THEME MUSIC] San Diego, California, in 1969
it was a very different city
00:02:00
than it is today. They used to call San Diego,
it was a small big town. In other words, it was large
in population for its time,
00:02:10
but it really was a tiny town. It had a small downtown
area, large suburban area,
00:02:15
entirely different
than it is today. San Diego was involved in
the middle of the Vietnam War.
00:02:21
There was a build-up of
the military installation. Huge sums of money were being
expended both on the navy
00:02:30
shipyard and on
Miramar Air Station, which was the Navy central
location for its aviation.
00:02:39
This was one of the closest
places in the United States to Vietnam. All of the men personnel
and military equipment,
00:02:48
it all came through San Diego. NANCY GRACE: One of the many
military personnel stationed
00:02:54
in San Diego at the
time is Mary Scott's former husband, Patrick Wyble. I joined the Navy in 1962.
00:03:04
And I was stationed
in San Diego. Good friend of mine didn't
have a vehicle and I did.
00:03:10
And one weekend, he asked me to
give him a ride with his date. So when I picked him
up, Mary happened
00:03:17
to be with them because she knew
the girl that he was dating. She jumped in the front seat
and they sat in the back
00:03:23
and we started talking. And the next weekend, she
brought me to the beach. I had never been to a beach.
00:03:32
I'm just an old country boy. While we're at the beach,
I asked her to marry me. And she said, well, first,
let's go have some pizza, which
00:03:45
I hadn't never had that either. So she brought me
to this pizza house. We had pizza, and she
said, yeah, I'll marry you.
00:03:54
NANCY GRACE: The young couple
moves to Louisiana and share a home with Patrick's parents.
00:03:59
Two little girls,
Christine and Donna, same come along but Mary
misses the lifestyle
00:04:05
in Southern California and
decides to return to San Diego. One day she said she had
to go back to California.
00:04:13
And I said, well, you're
not taking the girls. No, she said, I know they are-- your mother loves them so much.
00:04:23
They will be well taken care of. So I put her on the bus
and never saw her again.
00:04:31
NANCY GRACE: It's apparent,
Mary Scott is a free spirit. Back in San Diego,
she finds a job
00:04:37
working as a dancer in a
club named the Star & Garter. In the early hours
November 20, 1969,
00:04:45
Mary Scott leaves the
club for the last time. She took a taxi cab home that
night driven by Tom Giaquinto
00:04:57
who was driving taxi
cabs at the time while he waited to
get on with the San Diego Police Department.
00:05:04
This would give
me an opportunity to learn about the streets and
the different areas of town.
00:05:09
Well, we chatted, of course. And she was always very
personable, very sweet woman.
00:05:14
You have to put it into
perspective that even though I have gray hair today, she
and I were approximately
00:05:22
the same age back in 1969. Mary Scott got
home that morning. She had just gotten off
from a long night of work.
00:05:31
She was in the bathroom,
taking off her makeup. There came some kind
of noise at the door
00:05:37
at 2:00 AM in the morning. She opened up the door, which
had a chain latch on it.
00:05:44
Now, the police know that
she opened up the door because there was no indication
that the door was forced when
00:05:52
it was closed but rather it
was forced after it was made ajar so that she
could look to see
00:05:59
who was knocking on the door. At that point, there was
a slam against the door. The door bolted open
with tremendous force.
00:06:08
The chain was ripped
from the wall. This man who attacked
her, hit her in the jaw.
00:06:15
It broke her jaw
to the point she started bleeding on the floor. She lost consciousness, or
at least was horribly dazed.
00:06:26
That's when the sexual
assault took place. He ripped her clothes off,
he sexually assaulted her,
00:06:34
he strangled her,
and she was dead. NANCY GRACE: When Mary
Scott is a no-show at work, her best friend, Dottie
Christofferson, gets worried.
00:06:45
Dottie and her boyfriend
go to Mary's apartment. What they saw must have
been horrific for them.
00:06:54
Mary was basically
spread-eagled on her back in the living room floor,
nude from the waist down,
00:07:02
legs and arms spread in what
we call the classic rape murder position. That's where if someone were
to rape and murder a woman,
00:07:12
that's probably the
position that they would be left in if they didn't
move the body post-mortem.
00:07:17
So that's what we see time and
time again as that position when we look at rape murders.
00:07:23
She screamed. She didn't know what to do. She called 911. She sat down. She had a drink and she smoked a
cigarette, which people respond
00:07:34
very strangely in the
midst of this kind of horrific criminal scene. So she had a cigarette and a
drink until the police arrived.
00:07:46
She had told the
uniformed patrol officers that she had moved
some stuff, that she
00:07:52
covered her up while
she lay on the ground and that she made a drink. They wanted me to
take her back inside
00:07:59
and have her put everything
back exactly like it was so that the other detectives
and the evidence technician
00:08:06
could properly record
everything inside the room. NANCY GRACE: In so many
cases just like this one,
00:08:14
neighbors hear trouble but
they're afraid to get involved. That's exactly
what happened here.
00:08:21
Mary Scott's neighbors
tell investigators they hear a disturbance
coming from Mary's apartment
00:08:29
in the early hours that morning,
but nobody, not one of them called police for help.
00:08:38
The neighbors reported that
at about 2:15 in the morning, they heard screams and a crash.
00:08:49
But the neighbors
didn't do anything. This is something
that, unfortunately, is very common for
people to witness crimes
00:08:57
to hear potential crimes
and not call the police because many of them just
don't want to get involved.
00:09:04
They don't want the police
getting into their lives and many people will witness
crimes and not report them.
00:09:13
NANCY GRACE: Word spreads
throughout San Diego about Mary Scott's brutal murder.
00:09:19
Young women working
in the city's clubs now living in fear. You have to understand this
a very small circle of people.
00:09:28
So the dancers that
work at one club know the dancers
that work in another. So the word gets
out very quickly.
00:09:33
The dancers came
forward with information on people that had followed
them home on some occasions,
00:09:39
stalked them on some occasions. NANCY GRACE: In 1969,
San Diego Police don't have much to go on.
00:09:47
They gather what little
evidence they can find and use what few forensic tools they
have to try to find solid clues
00:09:55
about Mary Scott's murder. That's next on
Bloodline Detectives. [AUDIO LOGO] November 1969, San
Diego, California.
00:10:14
The body of a 23-year-old
dancer, Mary Scott, found by a friend when Mary
doesn't show up for work.
00:10:21
Mary, the victim of a
vicious rape and murder. The San Diego
community now on edge,
00:10:29
especially women who work as
dancers in the city's clubs. A deputy from the San
Diego coroner's office
00:10:36
is the first to examine
the crime scene. Assailant always
leaves their mark. No matter what it is, there is
some kind of trace evidence.
00:10:50
There was blood on the floor. They couldn't be sure if that
was the assailant's blood
00:10:56
or if that was Mary's blood. They collected everything
that they thought had any value
00:11:03
for evidence examination. There was the door casing, the
broken chain, everything that
00:11:10
could be used to
lift fingerprints or any other kind of
evidence, and it was all gathered up and impounded.
00:11:20
NANCY GRACE: Now,
investigators pin their hopes on the results of
Mary Scott's autopsy,
00:11:26
hoping for meaningful clues. The autopsy was done
by a deputy coroner, and he'd reached two opinions.
00:11:34
One is the cause of death
and also the second one would be the manner of death. And the cause of death he
found was asphyxiation.
00:11:42
Her airway was compromised
not only by her broken jaw but by someone either
strangling her or covering
00:11:48
her mouth until she
could no longer breathe and she passed away. The manner of death was
classified as homicide.
00:11:56
NANCY GRACE: It's a
huge disappointment when Mary's autopsy does
not reveal very much
00:12:02
about who the killer could be. In a case like this, detectives
begin looking into the victim's
00:12:10
background,
interviewing her family, her friends, her coworkers. The majority of
violent crimes and murder
00:12:19
are perpetrated by
someone the victim knows. They're typically a
significant other,
00:12:25
a potential family member. So in Mary's case,
the first people that the police wanted
to speak to and look into
00:12:33
were those closest to Mary. They sent two detectives
from California talk to me to make sure where I was.
00:12:42
They found information in her
belongings related, you know, that came back to me.
00:12:49
Dotty was never a suspect. However, Dotty's husband or
ex-husband was a suspect.
00:12:56
Word got back to the detectives
that Dotty's husband was upset at the tight relationship that
Dotty had formed with Mary
00:13:03
and he blamed Mary for the
breakup of his marriage. Another suspect
that they looked at
00:13:09
was an ex-boyfriend of
Mary's who was a pilot. There was also a
current boyfriend
00:13:14
and Mary had who
was in Las Vegas, who had some dubious ties. Several other
suspects were examined
00:13:19
but ultimately they couldn't
make a case on any of them. NANCY GRACE: Investigators
get a big break
00:13:26
from an alert newspaper reader. The last person to
see Mary Scott alive is a part-time taxi driver
and soon to be police
00:13:36
officer named Tom Giaquinto. He reads about Mary's
murder and immediately goes to police with
a first-hand account
00:13:47
of Mary Scott's last ride home. I was interviewed
by the Sergeant from the homicide team, who
ironically became my superior
00:13:58
when I was in homicide. So I ended up working
for the same fellow that interviewed me.
00:14:04
They asked me if I
would voluntarily take a polygraph
examination and, of course,
00:14:10
I immediately said
yes, which was a great investigative
technique for no other reason
00:14:15
than to eliminate me as
one of the people that may be a suspect. NANCY GRACE: San Diego
Police grind down
00:14:23
every available lead,
but get no closer to identifying a suspect. Mary Scott's murder goes
cold for investigators
00:14:33
but it's rekindled
by her own family. Remember, Mary left
behind two little girls
00:14:40
with her former husband's
family back in Louisiana? The girls are very
close to each other
00:14:47
and very close to their
grandmother who's raising them. Grandma never told them anything
about their mom's and murder.
00:14:56
Then one of Mary
Scott's daughters finds a newspaper article
inside a wooden chest
00:15:02
in grandma's bedroom. She finally told us the truth
when we found out everything.
00:15:08
And we didn't understand like
the rape and the strangulation. We were young, we were
11 and 12 years old.
00:15:16
You don't hear about things
like that at that age, and we were raised
in the country.
00:15:19
And she told us the truth and
she says she just protected us because she didn't want
whoever murdered my mom
00:15:26
to come and get her girls. She called us her girls. NANCY GRACE: For Donna
and Christine Wyble,
00:15:32
another 10 years go by
without any progress in their mother's murder case. Then tragedy strikes this
close knit family yet again.
00:15:43
On the night of
December 20, 1989, two decades after the
murder of Mary Scott, Mary's daughter, Christine,
never makes it home.
00:15:55
At the time, I was
living at my grandmother's. Christine's kids
were there, too.
00:15:59
So we kind of made a
little pallet on the floor and I was sleeping
with the kids.
00:16:02
And my grandmother
was on the couch. And I remember my grandfather
waking my grandmother up
00:16:09
and he said, Christine
got in a wreck. She didn't make it. And she just fell. She just-- I couldn't
remember the exact moment.
00:16:16
She got off real late from work
and it was actually sleeting and it was icy roads that night.
00:16:22
And her car flipped
like six times. NANCY GRACE: After
Christine's death, her sister, Donna,
becomes more and more
00:16:30
focused on the murder of
their mother 20 years before. She contacted San Diego
detectives looking for updates
00:16:39
on her mom's investigation. I called the police in 1998. And I talked to
Sergeant Ron Thiel.
00:16:47
And he said it just so happens
they working on my mom's case. NANCY GRACE: A daughter
joins the search for answers
00:16:55
about her mother's murder. Can the very latest forensic
science deliver answers?
00:17:02
That's next on
Bloodline Detectives. [AUDIO LOGO] San Diego, 2020,
50 long years have
00:17:17
passed since the brutal
murder of 23-year-old mother of two, Mary Scott. Now, Mary's determined
daughter and new DNA technology
00:17:27
offer investigators hope. Hope that somehow they
will find Mary's killer. Crime scene personnel will
recover great physical evidence
00:17:40
at a scene, whether it
be at the scene itself or in a rape kit exam. And what we find
now is we locate
00:17:50
and discover suspect DNA. In order for us to know
who that DNA belongs to, that suspect needs to
already be in the database,
00:18:00
which is CODIS. So many times,
suspects are in CODIS because in order
to be in CODIS, you
00:18:06
have to fit a very specific
guideline that is closely monitored for obvious reasons
is very important to only put
00:18:11
people in there that
need to be in there if we find ourselves
investigating cases
00:18:15
that we have the bad
guy's DNA where we just don't know who the bad guy is. The Mary Scott
case tells a story
00:18:22
when you look at
the crime scene, you can tell that the
victim has been raped. You know what happened there.
00:18:28
It's not a mystery. And what was left behind
on and inside her body tells us who did the crime.
00:18:36
So we had the answer but
we just didn't know who that DNA profile belonged to. NANCY GRACE: Police now have
a very strong DNA sample
00:18:46
from the original crime scene. Unfortunately, there's no
match in the CODIS database.
00:18:52
Investigators now turn their
attention to a new technique, achieving remarkable success
in solving cold cases--
00:19:01
forensic genetic genealogy. The best way I can
describe it is this. If you go to 23andMe,
for example, just
00:19:10
as one of the many companies,
and you give them your DNA, they will process
your DNA and they
00:19:16
will compare your DNA to the
DNA of all the other people in their database. And based on how
much DNA you share,
00:19:23
they can predict roughly
what your relationship is with these people, whether
you're a first cousin
00:19:28
or a second cousin, et cetera. Well, what we do in
law enforcement now is we take the DNA left
behind by the suspect
00:19:34
at a crime scene. We put that DNA into the
system and we get a list of the offender's relatives.
00:19:40
And then based on just good
old-fashioned computer work and knocking on doors,
we try to deduce
00:19:45
who the bad guy is based
on the relationship with his relatives. That's just as simple as it is.
00:19:51
NANCY GRACE: Mary Scott's only
surviving daughter, Donna, develops a close bond with San
Diego cold case investigators
00:19:59
who are trying desperately
to solve her mother's murder. Totally, he's like non-stop.
00:20:06
He will dig and dig and
he'll find things out. I mean, he's just-- that's his passion.
00:20:12
And he's a great guy
and so is the DA Chris. The DA is just incredible. And I am so amazed because
I met the actual taxicab
00:20:22
driver that would bring
my mom home every night. His name was Tom. He's so nice, just
super nice guy,
00:20:28
and he was telling
me about my mom, too, how she was so selfless. And she'd get in the cab at
night and he'd bring her home
00:20:35
and she asked him
how his day was. And she was a big
tipper, he said. She'd leave him $0.75.
00:20:41
And back then, he
said, that's a big tip. So I thought that
was sweet over. NANCY GRACE: The cold
case investigators
00:20:50
have solid evidence
from Mary's murder. The original
investigative team in 1969 was meticulous in
how they collected
00:20:59
and recorded everything they
discovered at the crime scene. One of the reasons I say
that no single person can solve
00:21:06
a homicide is because there's
so many people involved and one of the biggest
parts of our system,
00:21:14
and they don't get
much recognition, is the workers in
the property room. And if you could imagine saving
that evidence for 51, 52 years,
00:21:22
keeping it refrigerated, keeping
it organized, and remember we moved in 1986 from an old
station to a new station
00:21:29
and bring it all that property
over, sorting it, tracking it, it's an incredible job.
00:21:34
I'm constantly impressed
with what they do. NANCY GRACE:
Detectives re-examine the original evidence
from the investigation.
00:21:43
The first step in any
case is to review it and read it and make
sure that you're
00:21:47
familiar with the material. And then you try to
plan a course of action as far as the investigation.
00:21:53
Which way am I going to go? Is there a likely
path to success? And in this particular
case, it was obvious
00:21:58
that the semen left
behind on Mary's body was from the offender based
on the way her body was found.
00:22:05
So basically, the
trick was can we identify whose semen this is? And we took that semen and
entered into a database
00:22:12
and came up with a
list of possible people that might be the offender. NANCY GRACE:
Forensic genealogists
00:22:19
began the painstaking task,
slowly building the killer's reverse family tree. Generation by generation,
the evidence moves
00:22:32
detectives closer to a suspect. Who we're looking for depends
on how close the match is.
00:22:40
Let's say we get a
match of a first cousin. Well, first cousins
share grandparents.
00:22:45
So in other words, if you
and I are first cousins, we're going to share
one set of grandparents.
00:22:49
So in that case, the
only thing you have to do is go back as far as
the grandparents level,
00:22:53
and in theory, if your
numbers are right, then you're going
to work back down and you found out
who your offender is.
00:22:59
So for second cousins
and third cousins, you have to go back
much, much further.
00:23:02
In this particular case, we were
lucky we got a fairly close hit and we didn't have
to go back that far.
00:23:08
NANCY GRACE: The discovery
of a person believed to be a first cousin
of Mary's killer
00:23:14
is a major breakthrough
for Bloodline Detectives. The net is beginning to close.
00:23:21
Basically built a tree, and
we use things like obituaries, marriage notices, birth notices,
newspaper articles, computer
00:23:31
databases, and it was able
to really fairly easily put together the family
tree and figure out
00:23:38
who several possible
offenders were. We came up with a list
of possible offenders
00:23:45
and understanding, of
course, that this genealogy predicts only probabilities
but not certainties.
00:23:53
When we reviewed the list,
we saw that really nobody had any connection to San
Diego except one person,
00:23:59
and that person was John Sipos. We now have our
first real lead. And it's not just a little
lead, this is big time.
00:24:10
We probably have
our perpetrator, but we've got to prove it. What do we do? Well, they look for
him, and oh my goodness,
00:24:19
he's in Pennsylvania. They started doing an
investigation of him in Pennsylvania
and his background.
00:24:26
Lo and behold, in 1969,
he lived in San Diego, 2.3 miles away from Mary. He was a former military man.
00:24:39
He was in the Navy. After being discharged
right about the time that Mary was killed,
shortly after her death,
00:24:49
he moved away to Pennsylvania. NANCY GRACE: Anthony
Johnson, the lead cold case investigator, shares the news
of a possible breakthrough
00:24:59
with Tom Giaquinto. Remember him? The taxi driver turned policeman
who drove Mary Scott home
00:25:06
the night she was murdered. He told me that
they had a suspect. He told me the suspect's name,
where the suspect was located,
00:25:15
and that they still
had some more work to do on it before they
could make an arrest
00:25:20
but he wanted me to know. This was a case I had lived
with since the day it occurred
00:25:25
because I had worked it, because
I was the last person to see her alive besides the murderer.
00:25:31
The case never left my mind. So to think that wow, finally,
and I'm alive to see it,
00:25:38
it made me feel wonderful. NANCY GRACE: Investigators
now have a name. This is a remarkable lead
in the investigation.
00:25:48
A name by itself, however,
is still not enough. Investigators must
tie that name,
00:25:55
that person to hard evidence
from the crime scene. When we get a
name, what we believe
00:26:05
to be the suspect in a
case, such as this case being John Sipos,
that is considered
00:26:11
an investigative lead. It is on the responsibility
of the investigators to then get a current DNA sample
from that person to compare
00:26:21
it to the DNA from the case. They need to get
conclusive evidence, and that's what
they set out to do.
00:26:30
NANCY GRACE: The
Bloodline Detectives are so close to cracking
a 50-year-old murder.
00:26:36
As we see next, they
are one DNA match away from catching a killer. [AUDIO LOGO]
00:26:52
San Diego, California,
2020, some 50 years after the savage rape and murder
of a young San Diego mother.
00:27:01
Police now closing
in on a suspect. His name, John Sipos. As soon as the San
Diego Police got a hit
00:27:12
through genetic
genealogy, the next step that they needed to
do was to make sure
00:27:17
that John Sipos was their guy. And the deeper they
looked into it, investigators discovered
that Sipos lived in San Diego
00:27:26
around the time
of Mary's murder. They also discovered that
he was now married, living
00:27:33
in Pennsylvania with his wife. It's necessary to get
DNA from the suspect. You could try to knock on
their door and ask them for DNA
00:27:43
but a lot of people would
say no in that situation. So oftentimes, investigators
will look for discarded trash.
00:27:49
And they'll take DNA off
a discarded trash item. Maybe it's a straw and a soda
cup, maybe it's a cigarette,
00:27:55
maybe it's a bottle, something
that the suspect would have touched and left their DNA on.
00:28:00
They'll gather that,
they'll do DNA testing. It's called a secondary
reference in the DNA world.
00:28:06
And they'll see if that's
secondary reference from the suspect matches
the crime scene DNA.
00:28:12
The United States
Supreme Court has said that once you put
things in your trash can
00:28:17
out on the curb,
that's anybody's game. You can search it,
you can seize it. You do not need a warrant
because the person has said
00:28:29
openly and figuratively,
I no longer have any expectation of privacy. So the police wait
till trash day,
00:28:38
people put their
trash out at the curb. They go and they
search that trash. NANCY GRACE: After collecting
John Sipos's trash,
00:28:48
police finally get that break
they've been waiting for. In this case, law enforcement
officials from Pennsylvania
00:28:55
were able to retrieve a Band-Aid
from Sipos's garbage bag which later was compared to
the case and the DNA
00:29:04
from the crime scene,
which proved to be a match. NANCY GRACE: This case,
however, is far from over.
00:29:10
Police must still arrest the
suspect and extradite Sipos from Pennsylvania all the
way back to California.
00:29:20
First thing we do is we write
an arrest warrant affidavit. It's signed by a judge so the
judge signs off on the fact
00:29:27
that we do have enough
to charge this person. Formal charges are filed here
in San Diego, California.
00:29:33
And then we reach out to try to
get the local law enforcement agency to actually
make the arrest for us
00:29:39
because we don't
have law enforcement powers in Pennsylvania. And of course, they were
more than happy to do that.
00:29:46
He did not put up
any type of fight. He was taken in
without incident. Following that is an
extradition, which is simply
00:29:54
an agreement between the
governors of the United States that they will ship their
guy from Pennsylvania
00:29:59
to here to court in San Diego. NANCY GRACE: John
Sipos is extradited, brought from Pennsylvania
back to San Diego
00:30:08
for homicide detectives
finally began to question him. During the initial
interview, Sipos
00:30:17
makes a very
strange comment, one that intrigues investigators. That's next on
Bloodline Detectives.
00:30:25
[AUDIO LOGO] San Diego, California, 2022. Detectives interview John
Sipos, the prime suspect
00:30:39
in the 1969 murder of a
23-year-old mom, Mary Scott. Investigators surprised
by Sipos comments
00:30:49
which may tie him to the crime. Sipos was a pretty
cagey character. It was 51 years
after Mary's death
00:31:00
that the police were
able to interview him. He said, I don't remember Mary. I don't know anything about it.
00:31:06
But then out of the blue,
did she get what she wanted? He asked. Then the police,
what do you mean?
00:31:15
What do you mean? Nothing, nothing. He wouldn't answer
thing any more. I don't know, I don't know Mary.
00:31:21
But the statement, did
she get what she wanted? In the mind of the
police, this guy knew her.
00:31:29
This guy knew her well. This guy probably stopped
her, planned the attack, and then 50 years later said,
did she get what she wanted?
00:31:41
The police were pretty
certain they had their man. I just feel like if
I would meet with him,
00:31:47
he would slip or say
something ugly, just like when they put the crime
scene photos in front of him
00:31:54
and he acts, Tony, if
she got what she needed. Who does that? If you didn't do
it, wouldn't you
00:31:59
be having a little bit of
sympathy for these pictures and like who would do that?
00:32:04
He had none. If she got what she
needed, who says that? Not a normal human being.
00:32:11
I mean, this man has no soul. NANCY GRACE: Detectives take
a DNA sample from Sipos,
00:32:20
it's a 100% match to semen
left at the crime scene. John Sipos is indicted
and he goes to trial.
00:32:30
Investigators began
calling a long list of family and investigators
to update them on the case.
00:32:38
People that never gave
up on catching a killer. In this particular
case, we had a lot
00:32:45
of people that were
invested in the case, that had worked the
case, for example,
00:32:50
Jim Sing, Tom Giaquinto. The family was also involved
as the process went on. So I had a list of
about 15 people to call.
00:32:59
I was at home
when I got a call, and it was Tony Johnson,
who was an officer that I had worked around when
I was on the police department.
00:33:07
And he told me that
he was currently a detective in the cold
case unit of the San Diego
00:33:14
district attorney's office. I said, OK, so why
are you calling me? And he said, well, we solved
one of your cold cases.
00:33:23
And I said Mary Ellen Scott, 36,
and University, East San Diego. And he said, oh,
wow, you remember.
00:33:32
And I said, it was my
only unsolved case. October of 2020,
Tony texted me. He said, Donna, we now have the
man in custody that murdered
00:33:43
your mom, John Jay Sipos. He was a hospital administrator. Who does that, brutally
rapes a woman and then
00:33:52
hospital administrator? I mean, it just
doesn't make sense. I don't know the
mind of a killer.
00:33:58
NANCY GRACE: March
2022, the trial of John Sipos for the 1969
murder of Mary Scott begins.
00:34:08
It's an interesting
case for a juror. Not only is it a
murder case but also it's a very old murder case.
00:34:14
So I think the jurors
were interested not only to understand the
facts of the case
00:34:19
but understand why it had
been solved after so long and how we are going
to show who did it.
00:34:25
Mr. Sipos was
charged with murder. The statute of limitations
had run on the rape charge,
00:34:31
so we were no longer able
to charge him with rape. Even though it was
clear from the evidence
00:34:35
that this had been
a rape and a murder. NANCY GRACE: A key
witness in the trial is the person who first
discovers Mary's body,
00:34:44
it's Mary Scott's best
friend, Dottie Christofferson. The most powerful witness
by far was the victim's
00:34:52
friend, Dottie Christofferson. Even after all of
these years, it still affected her emotionally.
00:34:57
This is a very traumatic
event for a young woman to see her friend's body in that way.
00:35:02
When the trial
came up and when we presented it, when
she had to testify, it all came back to her.
00:35:06
The jury was very interested
in what she had to say. In my closing argument,
I told the jury
00:35:12
that the crime
scene, Mary's body, told us what had happened
to her, that she'd been raped and murdered.
00:35:18
And that the evidence
the offender left behind on her body told us who did it. That this was clearly
a crime of violence.
00:35:25
It was a crime of
sexual violence. And that the DNA, to
exclusion of everyone else
00:35:31
on the face of the
Earth, said that it was John Sipos who did the crime. NANCY GRACE: The
jury finds John Sipos
00:35:40
guilty of first
degree murder because of overwhelming DNA evidence. When it comes to
sentencing Sipos,
00:35:47
the judge is bound by the law. Well, the interesting thing
about sentencing in this case
00:35:53
is we are governed by the
law as it was in 1969. And 1969 law was very
different than it is today.
00:35:59
It's been 50 years, of course,
it's going to be different. And the punishment for
murder at that time
00:36:04
was seven years to life. So that was what we were
going by in this case. We were bound by the laws as
they existed back in 1969.
00:36:12
So the most that Mr. Sipos
could be sentenced to was seven years to
life in state prison.
00:36:18
For years, Sipos must
have thought that he would have never been caught. He moved out of San Diego,
he moved to Pennsylvania,
00:36:26
he got married. He essentially moved on with his
life for nearly five decades. So at a point, he must have
thought that he was never
00:36:34
going to get caught for this. NANCY GRACE: The
conviction of John Sipos is based on thousands
of hours of police work
00:36:44
over five decades. The last word in court still
belongs to Mary Scott's only remaining daughter, Donna.
00:36:56
I got up to the judge
and I said, judge, I said, my name is Donna Wyble,
I said, I am the daughter
00:37:03
of Mary Ellen Scott. And I said, I want
John Sipos, and I was the only one called him out.
00:37:12
Nobody else would. And I called his name out
loud in the courtroom. And I said I want John Sipos
to know that he has taken
00:37:20
everything away from
my sister and I. We will never know anything. And I mean, you could hear a
pin drop in that courtroom.
00:37:28
It was terrible. It was scary. It was like a relief
but it was horrible. And him just sitting
there and just--
00:37:38
it's hard to explain. NANCY GRACE: There are
others who have seen the case through from the beginning
like the taxi driver who,
00:37:46
except for the killer,
is the last person to see Mary Scott alive. She got out of my cab
and I received a radio call
00:37:58
to go pick up another fare. And I pulled away. I always thought, wow,
what if I had only
00:38:05
been there another three or four
or five minutes or 10 minutes, I might have heard something.
00:38:10
I could have maybe
saved her life. I could have done something. I always felt bad.
00:38:15
Rationally, I said, you know,
you couldn't do anything. You receive the radio call so
of course you had to leave.
00:38:20
But sure, I always felt terrible
that I knew such a nice person and that she had been tragically
murdered in the manner she was.
00:38:28
And that I might have, maybe
had the opportunity to save her. There's not a moment
I don't think about her.
00:38:40
I just wish I had known her. I remember her. I kind of felt eventually
she would come back, you know.
00:38:49
I really did. I always felt that
eventually she may come back still up until today.
00:38:57
NANCY GRACE: The successful
prosecution of John Sipos also demonstrates to the
community the determination
00:39:04
of San Diego law enforcement
to find Mary Scott's killer and bring him to justice.
00:39:12
Mary's case was
a very big deal for the local San
Diego community as well as nationwide.
00:39:18
This was a five-decade-old cold
case that remained unsolved. We're very proud of the work
the team did on this case.
00:39:26
It's always a team effort. And it's great that
we look at old cases that they're not forgotten, that
the investigation continues,
00:39:34
and that we fight every day to
try to bring justice to victims and their families whose crimes
may have been long forgotten
00:39:41
but are still very
deserving of justice. NANCY GRACE: The justice
that Mary Scott's family
00:39:48
and countless investigators
finally achieved is only possible because of
groundbreaking developments
00:39:57
in forensic genetic genealogy. I can't tell you what a
game-changer this genealogy
00:40:04
is now for law enforcement. Every day, you read about a
new case that's been solved.
00:40:09
Some cases where have been
worked for 30, 40 years. It's the best tool I think
we've gotten since DNA itself
00:40:15
or since fingerprints. I mean, we're still just
opening the door on it. NANCY GRACE: Mary
Scott's murder case
00:40:21
proves many things, the miracle
of modern day forensic science, the determination
of investigators,
00:40:29
but maybe most of all, the
undeniable strength of family. Mary Scott's only living
daughter Donna barely
00:40:40
knew her mother when
she was growing up, but that unshakeable
bond of mother and child
00:40:47
could not prevent her from
remembering her mother. Those memories gave her the
strength to find justice,
00:40:58
yanking it from the
jaws of tragedy. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for being with us
here on Bloodline Detectives.
00:41:08
[AUDIO LOGO] [THEME MUSIC]