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foreign [Music] Niles Michigan 1987 Terry Wood comes home to find his wife Roxanne dead on
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the kitchen floor she's covered in blood when he arrived he saw her laying on the
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floor he saw a large pool of blood on the floor he saw that her neck had been cut although Terry Wood finds his wife
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Roxanne and calls police he quickly becomes the number one suspect they're the last person that saw them
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they're the first person that discovered them with no eyewitnesses and not much
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evidence the case quickly goes cold police have only one hope left a groundbreaking tool genetic genealogy
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genealogy and fat advanced in science is what got us to where we are here today The Killers DNA sample is in very bad
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condition however raising doubts that bloodline detectives can crack the code just like dealing with a puzzle piece
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where lots of pieces are missing after Decades of waiting for justice there's only one forensic tool and one
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hope left to identify the killer of Roxanne wood I'm Nancy Grace this is bloodline
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detectives [Music] [Applause] [Music] Niles Michigan a small City located just over the state line from South Bend
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Indiana it's a quiet place to live all in all it's really just a blue collar Town family oriented nice place
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to live actually on the night of February 20 1987 Roxanne wood and husband Terry are out with
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friends Terry and Roxanne have been married for about five years they both had steady jobs lived in a
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nice neighborhood had a nice house had a couple pets and no children however they were
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talking about having children when Roxanne was killed they went out with some friends
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they went to dinner then they went to the bowling alley where a lot of Terry and Roxanne's friends were playing in a
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league Roxanne left the bowling alley prior to Terry at at the most about 45 minutes before
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him she went directly home by all indications Terry comes through the garage he shuts the garage he goes in the house
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and he looks and sees his wife laying there on the kitchen floor [Music] approaches her when he kneels down he
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sees there's pool of blood he lifts her head up and notices a gaping wound under her neck
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he saw her laying on the floor he saw blood a large pool of blood on the floor he saw that her neck had been cut
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as he went to check on her and called 9-1-1 he did check for a pulse at the recommendation of dispatch did not have
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a pulse he noticed that there was a knife sheath on the floor and relayed that to the dispatchers well obviously
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he was he was in shock in the 911 dispatcher was trying to keep him focused and wait for the Troopers to arrive at
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the scene which ultimately they did Mr wood greeted them at the door he was obviously covered in blood because he'd
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gone over and had held his wife when they walked in they also observed Roxanne laying on the floor a puddle of
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blood around her also observed was there was a frying pan that was on the kitchen
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floor there was a handle that was in the sink when they investigated a little bit
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further they also found a back door that was standing a jar with a droplet of blood on it
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her underwear is pulled down over her buttocks and it appears that maybe she was raped so what they did is they
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locked it down crime scene texts get there and continue to go through the process of checking for evidence they
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were able to get Terry away from the house foreign [Music] like this one it's standard operating
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procedure the first person police look at is the spouse in this case Roxanne Wood's husband Terry
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[Music] Terry was kind of animated and maybe a little bit tipsy from drinking they were
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able to bring him down to the station and our detective surgeon at the time took him up to his office and began to
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interview interview wasn't recorded so we don't have the luxury of viewing that
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interview but from the interview that was transcribed into notes he was very emotional
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he was adamant that he had nothing to do with the death of Roxanne and just very very
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emotional [Music] Terry said some strange things in the interview that put some red flags up for
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the detective Sergeant I know he mentioned something about the amount of blood that he saw and how long it would
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take for someone to die to expel that amount of blood and that seemed to the detective that wasn't something and
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someone would even fathom of saying under those circumstances one of Terry's
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family members came rushing into the lobby of the station and and yelled up to the detective's office and said don't
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say anything we got an attorney so that kind of sets off another red flag he had retained an attorney so at that
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point the interview stopped police secure the crime scene and hope that Roxanne Woods autopsy provides
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Clues [Music] the autopsy revealed that Roxanne had a contusion on the right side of her head
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and also a bruise on her right shoulder the frying pan was broken because the suspect struck Roxanne
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with that frying pan also it showed two slash marks one completely around her neck and one that started and
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stopped sexual assault kit was conducted at the time of the autopsy and sent to the
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Michigan State Police lab and processed from that and elimination there had been
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some seminal fluid found within her and on her clothing Roxanne wood is the victim of a brutal
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sex attack her assailant has left potential evidence a DNA sample off his semen found on and in Roxanne's body
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I mean it put a black cloud over to town I am confident that there are young girls that grew up at that time
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that went to bed scared at night without a dog a young wife brutally sex attacked then
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murdered a community living in fear there's a rapist and a killer on the loose and police have only one potential
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suspect that's next on bloodline Detectives foreign [Music] Michigan 1987 police investigating the
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brutal murder of 30 year old Roxanne wood their only person of interest Roxanne's own husband who actually makes
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a 9-1-1 call the night of her murder Roxanne's husband Terry Wood well you definitely look at it with
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suspicion I mean obviously he's got the right to to come and speak to the police
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or not to come and speak with the police but it definitely you look at it with a
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different I think a different perspective of okay why why is this why does he not want to
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talk to us everybody thought Terry did it but there wasn't anything to move forward I
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believe they submitted to the prosecutor but there just wasn't enough evidence to
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arrest Terry police do not have enough evidence to charge Terry Wood so they began to look
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at other theories for Roxanne's brutal murder they were looking at individuals that
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could could have committed the crime but they were looking at individuals that knew her interviews were conducted of
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everybody that was at the bowling alley that night a neighborhood canvas was conducted back in the neighborhood where
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this occurred where she was living to determine if anybody saw anything or heard anything
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it was all over the news the neighboring agencies all knew what was going on believed they did look at all the sex
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offenders in the area and still weren't able to to pinpoint one particular person even being near
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that residence there were a lot of different suspects you know none of them that took all the
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heat away from Terry everybody was a suspect not to the extent of Terry but everybody was pretty
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much a Suspect with it we we didn't have any idea I think once All Leads and no
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tips were coming in everybody had been that they knew could be interviewed they've been interviewed it went stale
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pretty pretty quick they continued to be worked on by the detective at the time but there's only so much information
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that that he could go on so from 87 until 2001. it's pretty much dead in the water
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police have a case rapidly going cold so they seek an unusual source for help a local University Professor named Ashland
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Kirsten and her students in the 80s you know a lot of it is handwritten and so we needed to turn all
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of these evidence boxes into one primary document that a busy detective could just pull it up on on the screen of his
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phone and then do a search for whatever A variation on a person's name a partial
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license plate number partial phone number whatever they needed at that time and be able to do it on their phone in
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real time and and that's what my team did so we were able to have a a scanner like
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a regular traditional scanner but we were able to use the special software that was able to recognize the
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characters in the words in these documents so basically we were able to feed these papers into a scanner and the
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software was able to take the words that were on the page and make them digital words
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we could hit one button and search any name in that entire report and that report
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consisted of three thousand six hundred plus pages with the help of Professor Kirsten and
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her students police now study the main piece of evidence from the crime scene from reading through the reports I
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learned that Roxanne was on her period her menstrual cycle we knew that Roxanne had a pad
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when she was killed it was stuck in her underwear the semen deposit was in the pad
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and it wasn't a mixture it was a single source which means that Roxanne came home took her tampon
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out put a pad on and then within minutes before going to bed because she was in her night clothes ready for bed
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she was attacked and sexually assaulted the evidence from the rape kit was re-examined at that time by our lab in
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Grand Rapids at that point they were able to obtain a profile and they entered it into CODIS
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and essentially that is continually searched through CODIS for arrestees and the resty database in the process of
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doing that when the Cold Case team came in because of this being relatively new they essentially started taking DNA
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swabs or buccal swabs from potential Witnesses potential suspects anybody they received a tip on that would be
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willing to to submit to these DNA Buckle swabs Professor Kirsten and her students
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police now determine Roxanne Woods menstrual pad could hold vital evidence to identify her murderer
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we obtained Buckle swabs from over 60 people back then to compare to the known sample that we had and in all
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of those that we did we did not have any hits we even went as far as to contact the local paper as well as the media
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and said that if anybody has had a relationship with Roxanne let us know we will be discreet and we
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just need to know who that person was the DNA results tell police everything they need to know about their number one
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suspect husband Terry Wood I grabbed the file I got the okay from the detective Sergeant to look at it
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you know to really spend some time with it when I was done I said to myself Terry didn't do it
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the original investigators based a lot of their Direction towards theories and how you would think
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someone would act and it kind of wasn't fair if you want to look at it you know just
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based on the evidence what what I I did was I let the evidence lead to the murderer
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and one of the big things that we had problems with was the DNA and Roxanne had DNA on her that was not teres
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[Music] number one suspect cleared by forensic science available at that time but as we
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see next a revolutionary new tool called genetic genealogy will emerge as a critical weapon for bloodline Detectives
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oh [Music] Niles Michigan 2021 police investigating the sex assault and brutal murder of Roxanne
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wood all the way back in 1987. police have sort through the CODIS National Database but find no matches
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now cops consider the possibility of a revolutionary forensic tool genetic genealogy but there's the catch the only
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DNA sample they have may be two degraded to produce results I had actually myself had called up to
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the lab asking about the DNA and then what was left of it because at the time everything in Michigan was transforming
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from paperwork to digital and just how air stuff was being stored how they were going to store it in proper procedures
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and at that time I was told that DNA had been used up and there was nothing left
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the case can't go anywhere without knowing who that DNA belonged to John had called me and said I want to
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pick up the Roxanne wood case and work it is is that okay and I said absolutely but if we're going to work it we got to
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work it as hard as we can because the family once they hear we're working this again
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they're going to have some element of of Hope here in this as well look through the case for all looked at
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the evidence looked at what we got back from the lab and in 2017 we got a new computer system Statewide
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and so all the evidence had to be placed from hard copies into this new system and in the process
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the extracts that were kept from all the analysis got lumped into one sealed package everybody thought we didn't have
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them you know they didn't exist but they did and I found it sometimes it's a combination of luck and
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old school detective work that provides a Lifeline for the bloodline detectives and that's what happens when detective
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John Moore miraculously finds one last shred of DNA evidence we were able to find some minuscule
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amount of DNA left that we were able to send away for forensic genealogy we knew with the sample that there was a
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potential it was going to get absorbed by the test so we wouldn't have any left
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but it was to a point where you know we had to try something we hired identifinders
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and Dr Colleen Fitzpatrick her company to do the genealogy testing for us investigate
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ideology all so called forensic genetic genealogy is ideology to Cold Case work in other
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words genealogists have been using DNA to identify adoptees for a long time for a couple of decades now all those
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techniques we've used to identify the birth parents of adoptees are now being
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applied to cold cases because in the long run it doesn't matter if you're an
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adoptee that is you don't know who you are or the DNA comes from say a violent
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offender a DNA left at a crime scene or DNA from a John or Jane Doe you have DNA
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and you don't know whose DNA it is so the techniques from there can be applied
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to any of those situations initially when when we sent it out there we were we were hopeful because we knew
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how powerful the genealogy tool was and could be it had been around for for some
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time now we have been using it for our unidentified remains cases and had great success with that
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it was actually an email sent to us in 2020 about the Roxanne wood so we start talking to you about it we
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were in the middle of covid and we you know took a long time to say find the records find what DNA samples were
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available it was a very difficult case with very low level degraded DNA foreign after we had sent it out to the
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company and they did their initial work on it we were on a video conference call
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and during that call Dr Fitzpatrick was not very positive with us about the state and the degradation of the sample
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degraded DNA means pieces of DNA it's fragmented it's like a puzzle with big
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pieces missing this was the last chance it took us nine months of careful discussion on what to do with this DNA
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because it was the last hope of solving the case at that point then the team Jason Bailey
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and John Moore and myself we were you know we we weren't as hopeful at that point
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we like to work with a nanogram of DNA which is a billionth of a gram of DNA and it turned out we we got down to 30
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picograms which is about what three percent of that and the value of only a few cells in the body it very small
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amount the DNA sample is badly degraded Colleen Fitzpatrick and her team wonder if it
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will work all humans are basically 90 something percent the same so even if you have
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fragmented DNA sometimes you can reconstruct some of the missing pieces because you know what humans look like
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you know what a human genome is so you can deduce some of the missing pieces which is part of what we did to kind of
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get the thing to move forward a couple of weeks later we get a call from Dr Fitzpatrick where it had totally
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flipped 180 degrees they were hopeful now that they were going to be able to make a match
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she never gave up we never gave up and she had contact with the program writers for the software that deals with
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processing the data from the DNA and they were able to kind of work it enough that we were able to get a full
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profile you upload your data and you just in the military DNA DNA exterx you know if they share more
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DNA they more closely related they share less DNA they're more distantly related but they're all
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related to Mr X amazingly the bloodline detectives have done it they patched together a DNA
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sample now Colleen Fitzpatrick Begins the tedious work of looking for DNA matches while co-worker Gabriella Vargas
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works with police to build the suspect's family tree I was on the phone with Gabby from like
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Thursday to a Sunday and you know if she needed somebody's last name I would look
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it up if she needed a birth certificate I'd call the police department and get
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that and you know just trying to piece together because there's so much that it
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entails you know with divorces and adoptions and deaths and other siblings or relatives that are you know Black
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Sheep it's just it's kind of a detailed process Colleen Fitzpatrick is ready to ID a
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suspect for police in April of 2021 Gabby was able to determine that the DNA belonged to one
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of three brothers the biggest thing we first check on is just to kind of see background and
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history on on these three names and two of them we pretty much could eliminate relatively quick because they did not
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appear to be in the area in 1987 with one of the names being left had been in the general Michigan Indiana area the
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entire time [Music] intelligence and background information was being conducted by the detectives at
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that point so yes we did a deep dive into it we did a criminal history search we got
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multiple police reports and found that this subject had a extensive criminal history and
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it happened to be that a lot of this criminal history was in some form of sexual deviancy in nature
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we quickly isolated Patrick Gillum as an individual of those three brothers that was the most likely
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suspect thanks to the incredible work of Colleen Fitzpatrick and her whole team police
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now have a name Patrick Gillum after 34 years they've got to make an arrest before it's too late that's next
00:25:03
on bloodline Detectives foreign [Music] Michigan 2021 the bloodline detectives have a suspect in the brutal sex assault
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and 1987 murder of 30 year old wife Roxanne wood his name Patrick Gillum but now police must track him down and make
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that arrest went crazy on digging information on him we found he had a prison history in
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Texas he was arrested in Arizona he had a prison history in Indiana it was just a gamut of criminal history and it just
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so happens in 1979 a home invasion rape occurred in Gary Indiana that case was an individual located down
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in Indiana and she was she was in her home with with her young children as well Patrick Gillum broke into that home
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sexually assaulted her didn't kill her took some items from the home was pulled
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over by a police department in Indiana ultimately he was interviewed and he confessed to being in that house
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and said he blacked out and all he remembered was pulling his pants up against to 14 years in the Indiana
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Correctional and was released after seven years and paroled he was on supervised parole
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to South Bend Indiana in September of 86. he had been paroled for about six months
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before he broke into Roxanne's home and killed her have the information they need to
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touch Gillum down we knew because we had genealogy DNA that we were going to need to get
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another sample of DNA to match his profile through our lab through CODIS as part of that we came up with a
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strategy or plan to utilize one of our undercover units our fugitive team to surveil him
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we knew he was a smoker and we were hopeful that when he moved or went mobile from his
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house slash apartment he would discard a cigarette butt or go into a restaurant leave his DNA behind
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on a class or on a cigarette butt the first time they went out they sat on the house like four days and no movement
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but when Patrick left he was smoking in his windows down they see Patrick flip a cigarette out
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his window one of the Troopers pulled his car over jumped out grabbed it put it in an
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envelope brought it straight up to me I took it straight to the lab what they're trying to do is develop a
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code of file from that to match the DNA because that's the legal form of identification now once they have that
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they can go and arrest him you know you just can't arrest somebody you've got to
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have that proof that it matches the crime scene and in this case they went to pick up a
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cigarette butt and at first it didn't match the crime scene DNA [Music] I thought to myself that's impossible
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and I even told him I said there's no way this guy was convicted of an identical crime went
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to prison this is the guy I don't care this is the guy and he's like sorry yep
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don't match I'm a scientist I deal with science and I was like man that's that's not good
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I don't believe that Gillum is not the guy gillum's the guy a week later or so
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we set up another sting where our surveillance team went out there and this time I think they got three
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cigarettes said well he did lose line of sight eye contact with the cigarette butt just for
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a moment so we said well can you go back and pick up the you know another cigarette this time you know make sure
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and he did and it was a match so the first time he had the wrong cigarette but thank goodness
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old school police work meets the latest in forensic science that's how the bloodline detectives I did the killer of
00:29:45
Roxanne wood after 30 years we went to him when we found this DNA out and one of the things that that we
00:29:55
were asked by the prosecute attorney is we need to get an interview into him because they could have some other
00:30:00
explanation how his DNA came to be I personally call left him messages and one point knocked on his door to try to
00:30:09
attempted to raise him and there was never any answer either way we didn't want him to know we were coming so we
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developed a strategy to meet him at his home and basically set up surveillance on him wait for him to leave the
00:30:24
residence and then approach him and explain to him we need to talk to him about an old case that we believe he had
00:30:30
some information on so essentially that same undercover team they had been watching Mr gillum's house
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they they let us know that yes Mr Gillum just left we knew from previous surveillance that usually when Mr Gillum
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left it was not for very long usually it was a short trip and he he came back to
00:30:49
the house so when he came back home detective Moore and I were sitting in his driveway waiting for him
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I see the door open on this truck and I jump out of the car kind of Dash up there and say hey uh do you mind talking
00:31:04
to me for a minute I'm a Michigan State Trooper he automatically you know started getting nervous and tried to
00:31:09
kind of make his way towards his door and I got his attention got him to come back and talk to him I said hey we're
00:31:16
you know my partner I said we're working on this case and we just need to touch
00:31:20
base with you your name came up and he was like okay I said you just drive yourself over South MPD we'll meet you
00:31:26
over there before we left he said is this about the Australian girl and I said well we'll talk about when
00:31:33
you get over there and my partner I looked at each other when we got in the car and we're like what the heck just
00:31:39
happened who was this Australian girl he comes into the lobby I greet him out there I asked him if it's okay if I
00:31:47
checked his pockets and he's got five pocket knives on him he looked old not not in great shape
00:31:57
kind of shuffled as he walked didn't look like he was very mobile we asked about this Australian girl and
00:32:05
he said you know there was a lake up there in Michigan that I was at with my buddy's cabin and there was a girl that
00:32:11
got raped but I had nothing to do with it so we just kind of put that in the back
00:32:16
of our mind and and kind of went to the direction of why we needed to talk to him he was definitely nervous I mean but
00:32:22
that is a lot of times to be expected with anybody their first contact with the police you know he was shaking
00:32:29
he wanted to work with us but on the other hand it was obvious that he wasn't going to let a lot of
00:32:35
information out no matter what what it was he said in 87 he was in South Bend he
00:32:43
was working as a welder we ascertained whether or not he was allowed to come into Michigan at all being on parole
00:32:50
asked him if he knew any Roxanne's he said I only know two one of them's moved
00:32:54
out of state and the other one's a stripper but we knew that neither one of those applied to to Roxanne wood we'd
00:33:01
asked him questions about if he'd ever had any girlfriends in Michigan to which
00:33:04
he told us no we'd asked him about his general knowledge of Niles Township and
00:33:08
Rhodes and and he didn't know any of that either and he started getting you know a little a little nervous and
00:33:18
my partner said to him We're investigating an assault they showed him a picture of Roxanne Woods at the time A
00:33:27
Portrait of her and asked him if he'd ever met this woman or seen this woman
00:33:33
that girl looks familiar that's his newer pictures and here's an older picture it kind of looks the same
00:33:43
but just a little bit of a little bit of difference I've never seen her never met her don't
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know who she is when he put the picture out in front of Patrick he started shaking and he said I
00:34:00
I need a lawyer I need a lawyer I gotta talk to my lawyer I gotta talk to my lawyer man
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okay his reaction to that was an admission of that this guy did something and he knows
00:34:20
exactly what he did if we would have had a full confession at that point we would have arrested him
00:34:28
very likely but that's we didn't have that we let him walk out the front door
00:34:32
which was our plan we knew we were going to do that if the interview went in in that direction
00:34:38
we had a meeting then with the prosecutor's office we had an agreement from them that they were going to charge
00:34:46
and that he would be arrested he was charged with with open murder didn't want to use a SWAT team we didn't
00:34:55
want this to turn into a an overly violent situation when we didn't have to to do that so the plan was devised that
00:35:03
we would use a wrecker and tow his vehicle because we had a search warrant for the vehicle as well and when that
00:35:08
wrecker pulled up Mr Gillum came out asked what was going on and at that point he was taken into custody
00:35:15
after 34 years have the bloodline detectives finally identified and captured the violent monster who raped
00:35:25
and killed Roxanne wood that's next [Music] oh [Music] 2021 after 34 years police from Niles
00:35:45
Michigan finally make an arrest in the Savage sex assault of a young wife 34 years before now they had the suspect
00:35:55
under questioning we have a team that was searching and processing the scene his house as well
00:36:02
as his vehicle while that was happening he came into the police department and that is when we conducted the second
00:36:09
interview we told him this is why you're being or why you're under arrest because of
00:36:14
Roxanne Woods murder I started asking him I guess essentially to say what have you got to say about this you gave him
00:36:19
several opportunities to to explain himself told him that his DNA was found at the scene how do you explain your DNA
00:36:28
being there as we proceeded with the interview he would make comments of you have my DNA you have the photos
00:36:39
I must have done it he would never go into detail about the incident and he would use his drug abuse
00:36:48
as a as a pawn as why he couldn't remember things but at no point in time did he ever say he did not do it
00:36:58
police Grill Patrick Gillum still he will not admit to the crime even when he's told about DNA evidence
00:37:06
incriminating him but then detective John Moore tells Patrick Gillum what lies ahead for him
00:37:16
I said I don't care what you say I want this to go to trial I want this to go to trial I want people to see what
00:37:24
you did and I want you to give an explanation at the end of why you did it because our judge will will require that
00:37:30
think that stuck in the back of his mind and might have pushed him to request a plea in the end because it wasn't a
00:37:39
situation where our prosecutor went out and said hey we'll give you this plea
00:37:41
the defense came to the prosecutor and said this is what we want to do and we're willing to plea
00:37:48
he pleaded to 23 years for a secondary murder charge I was kind of dumbfounded because
00:37:57
you know we were prepping for a big long heavy duty trial Patrick Gillum takes a plea deal the
00:38:06
very first person police want to contact is that person their own colleagues thought may have committed the crime
00:38:14
Roxanne Woods then husband Terry Wood after we made the arrest I called him he showed up to State Police post in Niles
00:38:25
with his brother Robert and I sat talked with him and obviously he was very emotional being told that we
00:38:35
have the individual that killed Roxanne finally after 35 years it was a great feeling knowing that
00:38:43
finally we were able to give him hopefully some peace of mind and the community that it always questioned on
00:38:50
whether or not he was the one that killed his wife after over 35 years cops put Roxanne's
00:38:58
killer where he belongs behind bars now the team reflects on how important the use of genetic genealogy is to solving
00:39:09
this case on a scale of 0 to 100 100 being the most important it was a hundred because genealogy
00:39:22
and that advance in science is is what got us to where we are here today they took something from nothing and
00:39:34
they it turned into a person I mean that's really it's just the most amazing
00:39:39
journey I I couldn't make this up I want to say the genealogists that did the work on this was Gabby Vargas she
00:39:48
did an absolute brilliant job and after 35 years she saw this in four days I mean the woman is brilliant
00:39:56
Patrick Gillum had almost 35 years of freedom that he shouldn't have had and Terry Wood the woods family her
00:40:07
siblings had to go through 35 years of not knowing so yes yes there's Justice
00:40:17
I sure wish it would have happened sooner though for Monsters like that if they left
00:40:22
their DNA at the crime scene we're gonna find you it's just a matter of time
00:40:29
The Savage Sex Attack rape and murder of Roxanne wood is solved thanks to the incredible science of genetic genealogy
00:40:40
the more people whose DNA becomes available the more crimes can be solved and always remember your DNA is
00:40:48
everywhere on that glassy touch on the sheets you sleep on and in the case of Patrick Gillum on the cigarette butt he
00:40:57
flicked away a cigarette butt that provided bloodline detectives the match they desperately needed to find a killer
00:41:07
and bring resolution to a 34 year old Cold Case murder I'm Nancy Grace thank you for joining us
00:41:17
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