00:00:01
[TENSE MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
1987, Prescott, Yavapai County, Arizona. Hikers hear a scream
from Thumb Butte Trail.
00:00:23
They heard her
scream for help. Some people said
they heard a gunshot. It's a gruesome scene.
00:00:28
There's crime scenes,
and then there's scenes like this,
where it's just above and beyond the brutality.
00:00:34
When you have knife
wounds and gunshot wounds and blunt force
trauma, that's an attacker
00:00:39
that's acting out of rage. And I think really
frightened the detectives that knew that information.
00:00:46
NANCY GRACE
(VOICEOVER): The body of a young woman discovered. Police rush to the scene.
00:00:51
The news of an event like
this happening at such a popular and well-known trail in
a small rural community
00:01:00
at the time would
have most definitely been shocking to the community. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
The case goes cold,
00:01:07
but investigators keep
returning to the case over the next 35 years. It was always at the back
of the detectives' minds.
00:01:16
But we had new cases that came
in, and we had priorities set. It went cold, but they
never threw the case away.
00:01:24
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
Breakthroughs in DNA science will allow
this case to be reopened.
00:01:30
Detectives will connect this
sex predator to more attacks. I was scared to walk anywhere.
00:01:38
You know, wonder
if I run into him. Wonder if I see him
at a restaurant. I didn't know that there
were other victims.
00:01:46
I mean, she had her whole
life, and he just killed her. I think my favorite part about
genealogy being used in this way
00:01:55
is that people who
thought they were gonna get away with something
that happened 30 years ago
00:01:59
are now being caught. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): This
is the story of the search for a killer and a
sex predator, a search
00:02:08
that lasts a stunning 36 years. I'm Nancy Grace. Welcome to "Bloodline
Detectives."
00:02:16
[THEME MUSIC] 1987, Prescott, Yavapai
County, Arizona, a picturesque city known
for its charming small town
00:02:51
feel and its natural beauty. So our county is about 8,000
square miles, a little over.
00:02:58
And it's rural. It's urban. It's mountains. It's desert. There's water. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
Nature lovers
00:03:05
head out early to the
popular Thumb Butte Trail. That way, they
avoid the scorching
00:03:11
mid-summer temperatures. You can see it
from all over town. It's on our county seal.
00:03:17
The trail was all
dirt at one time. Now parts of it are paved. But it's-- it's always
been kind of that hiking
00:03:24
trail that people gravitate to. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
23-year-old local student Cathy Sposito loves to
ride her bike and hike the area.
00:03:35
We were a close family. It was me and my sister
and brother and parents. I was three years
older than Cathy.
00:03:44
She graduated from high
school in Brooklyn, and then she wanted
to go out West. And my mother was
against that idea.
00:03:51
But when Cathy became an
adult and especially she wanted to go to
school out there,
00:03:57
my mother couldn't stop her. She was attending
Prescott College, studying outdoor studies, ecology.
00:04:04
She was someone
who's been described as loving the outdoors,
wanting to go camping, hiking.
00:04:09
She was known to ride
her bicycle around town. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
June 13, 1987.
00:04:18
Cathy Sposito leaves home
for one of her routine hikes. She locked her bicycle up
at the bottom of the trail,
00:04:27
and then she went on a
hike onto what we call the Thumb Butte Loop Trail. And she doesn't get
very far from the parking
00:04:34
lot and the camp area. And she's attacked. There were several other
users of the trail that day.
00:04:43
There was arguing
or loud voices heard and then ultimately
some cries for help. Some people said
they heard a gunshot.
00:04:52
And it was a couple that--
that found her first. The people who discovered
her on the trail flagged down
00:05:01
a motorist, who had a
CB radio, who called it in and-- and called the police. And, of course, it was
assigned to the sheriff's
00:05:10
department, who responded. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
First responders tried to revive Cathy Sposito,
but she has passed away.
00:05:24
We had a number of
deputies that responded. And then we had, I
believe, four detectives
00:05:29
that came out there at
the time and started trying to process that scene. So one of our deputies,
he arrived on scene,
00:05:39
made his way up
there, and he came up, saw a woman that was covered in
a blanket, removed the blanket,
00:05:46
and there was blood
head to toe on her. Everywhere had blood
smears all over her.
00:05:53
She had massive
injuries to her head. He observed that there was
a blood trail further up
00:05:58
the trail, but
looking at the body, it appeared that there was
blunt force trauma to the head,
00:06:03
several stab wounds, some cut
marks across her forehead, and that her left eye, somebody
had shot her in her left eye.
00:06:13
About 6 feet away, we
found a shell casing, a .22-caliber shell casing. We collected that also.
00:06:21
Not far from the scene,
they found a ratchet. We believe that that
was, at that time,
00:06:26
likely one of the weapons
that was used to assault her. And it turned out that it was.
00:06:34
Interestingly, about
this crime scene, all of the clothing that
Cathy was wearing was intact.
00:06:40
Nothing was ripped. It didn't appear that anything
was taken off her body. She was found in
the clothes that she
00:06:48
was wearing at the time. She was found wearing
red shorts, a bikini top, white shoes with gray socks.
00:06:56
She had a backpack and
a yellow bicycle helmet. She didn't have any ID on her. We found an address
book in there,
00:07:04
and we worked back from
there and found out that she lived over on-- on Division Street at the time.
00:07:12
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
Detectives must now inform Cathy Sposito's family. That day, I came home from
work, and a cousin of mine
00:07:23
answered the door. And I was like, Joey,
what are you doing here? And I went into the house and
saw other relatives there,
00:07:32
and they broke the
news to me that Cathy was killed in Arizona. It was a blur in some
ways, but I remember
00:07:42
it was very depressing. I can remember now
thinking about it, I don't remember
much about that day,
00:07:48
but I do remember coming
home, sitting in the yard. It was very hard,
especially my mother.
00:07:54
She suffered greatly and wanting
answers about what happened, why this happened to Cathy.
00:08:06
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
A young woman beaten dead in broad daylight. Police search for a killer
before he strikes again.
00:08:15
That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives." [TENSE MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
Prescott, Arizona, 1987.
00:08:29
The body of a
beautiful young woman, 23-year-old Cathy
Sposito, discovered on a popular hiking trail.
00:08:37
It's early in the morning
when she's savagely attacked. Investigators hope and pray
her autopsy will tell them how
00:08:46
she died and who killed her. The coroner finds
that Cathy Sposito is stabbed in her right ear.
00:08:55
She's shot in her left eye. She has bruising all over
her eyes and her face. She has a broken
nose, a broken tooth.
00:09:05
And they find that she was
attacked with that racket wrench and also rocks. And the way that
her injuries were,
00:09:13
the coroner believed
that her attacker might have been left handed. The coroner finds that Cathy's
manner of death is homicide,
00:09:22
but the cause of death
is ruled blunt force trauma and extreme blood loss. You've got an attacker who's
very, very acting out of rage
00:09:32
at that point. When you have knife
wounds and gunshot wounds and a blunt force
trauma, that's an attacker
00:09:39
that's acting out of rage. And that was something that was
very key to the investigation
00:09:45
and I think really
frightened the detectives that knew that information. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
The medical examiner
00:09:52
begins by collecting DNA sample
from Cathy Sposito's body. This was 1987. DNA science and
evaluation and use
00:10:04
for criminal
identification purposes kind of started in
England in about 1985. So DNA had been around, but
it hadn't matured to the point
00:10:15
of spreading to law
enforcement in general here in the United States
and particularly
00:10:20
in a small town
environment here. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): DNA
from an unknown individual
00:10:25
is recovered from the body
of young hiker Cathy Sposito. The medical examiner,
upon performing the autopsy,
00:10:36
discovered that she had
a broken front tooth, but her mouth was
relatively unscathed.
00:10:44
So it didn't look
like she was struck in the mouth with a rock
or a wrench or something
00:10:49
but possibly soft
tissue, a fist. So the idea was, well,
maybe our assailant's DNA
00:10:57
might be in the blood in her
mouth that was recovered. And so we did
discover not a full,
00:11:03
but a near full profile
of male DNA in her mouth. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
Detectives take a closer look
00:11:10
at Cathy Sposito's circle of
friends and acquaintances, looking for potential suspects.
00:11:16
There was an artist who
Cathy had posed for him in his artwork and photographs. The artist only used her
for a short amount of time
00:11:26
because he said she
can't sit still. She's too fidgety, and I need
somebody that's gonna sit still.
00:11:31
And so he-- you know,
he was paying her to sit and ended up not
using her after that.
00:11:40
NANCY GRACE
(VOICEOVER): The artist for whom Cathy Sposito
posed has a strong alibi,
00:11:46
and he is ruled
out as a suspect. Detectives focus on
another individual connected to Cathy Sposito.
00:11:55
We believe he had some
friendship with Cathy Sposito at the time. He told detectives
that he saw Cathy about
00:12:03
a week before she was killed. But through their
investigation, detectives learned that didn't quite add
up with eyewitness interviews.
00:12:11
He takes a lie detector
test and fails. He's not telling the truth. They were able to place him at
Murphy's Bar just a day before.
00:12:22
And that's where
Cathy was a waitress. When we come back to
"Bloodline Detectives,"
00:12:29
police believe they finally
have a prime suspect. But can they prove it? [TENSE MUSIC]
00:12:45
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
Prescott, Arizona, 1987. Detectives investigating
the sex assault
00:12:50
and murder of a young hiker,
23-year-old Cathy Sposito. Her body found in broad daylight
on a local hiking trail.
00:13:01
Detectives now believe one
of her own acquaintances has something to hide. Detectives go and
search his home,
00:13:10
and in there, they
find some tools, including a Craftsman
half socket wrench. And remember, it was a
socket wrench that was found
00:13:19
at Cathy Sposito's crime scene. He couldn't be excluded from-- from being of the same type
that we found out at the scene.
00:13:29
Of course, back then,
you really, you know, only had a couple of--
of tool manufacturers.
00:13:35
You know, that was
unfortunate that, you know, we just didn't
have the capability
00:13:42
back then that we have now
to-- to rule things in or out. We started
investigating and found
00:13:49
out that he had
a friend that was a paramedic that was on scene. And that paramedic actually
fed information to him.
00:13:57
He had intimate knowledge of
things in the investigation and in the injuries
to Cathy that
00:14:04
were not let out to the public. I don't know what his
motive would have been. It-- it didn't appear
from the reports
00:14:11
that he was trying to help us
solve her murder, but all it did was it gave us more ammunition
and gave us the opportunity
00:14:21
to look at him further when he
could have discounted himself right from the beginning.
00:14:27
NANCY GRACE
(VOICEOVER): The man, who looked so promising as
suspect number one, is cleared.
00:14:34
That's not all. The leads are
starting to dry up. It's the worst position
for investigators
00:14:42
to be in when you have this
brutal homicide of a college girl. And not only can they not give
Cathy Sposito's family any
00:14:51
answers, they have an entire
community who is waiting for somebody to be
arrested and held
00:14:56
accountable so that they
can breathe a sigh of relief because at this point
now, everyone's scared.
00:15:04
Slowly, it started going
colder and colder and colder until about the mid-'90s
when we really started
00:15:13
having success with DNA. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
2013, investigators take another look at the
DNA evidence from Cathy
00:15:23
Sposito's 1987 murder. The medical examiner here in
Yavapai County in 1987 noticed
00:15:33
evidence of-- of injury
to the front of her mouth, her lip, and her teeth. And so he had swabbed
that portion of her mouth.
00:15:41
And so it was on that swab
that we found male DNA, what we call Y-STR DNA. It was huge.
00:15:49
And you get very excited. But, of course, in 2013,
the only thing we could do was put it into CODIS.
00:15:56
CODIS is a huge tool
for investigators. CODIS stands for the
Combined DNA Index System.
00:16:03
And how that works
is they will upload DNA from a criminal
to that system once they're booked into jail.
00:16:12
And that's used so that if
they get a DNA hit elsewhere, whether it's within their own
agency or to another state,
00:16:20
it helps catch people
for other crimes if they're already incarcerated. And so that's what
they needed to do
00:16:26
was upload this DNA
they now had to CODIS. But at the time, they
didn't get any hits.
00:16:36
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Now
detectives take another approach to Cathy Sposito's murder.
00:16:40
They begin to
investigate cold cases in the area that occurred around
the same time as Cathy's murder.
00:16:49
They catch a break. They discover a very
similar attack also occurred on the Thumb
Butte Trail in 1990.
00:17:01
There was a detective in
here, Detective Pritchard, and they were going through
a bunch of old cold cases.
00:17:07
And-- and this was never done
back in the day because we didn't-- you don't
even think about
00:17:13
one crime being connected to
another crime to another crime. And he started looking
through these old files,
00:17:19
and that's when he
found the other case that was similar to Cathy's. April 22, 1990.
00:17:31
In this case, a young woman is
hiking, just like Cathy was. And she is attacked with a
rock and sexually assaulted.
00:17:42
But she gets away. She's told, though,
by the assailant, do not tell anybody about this.
00:17:50
So as soon as she gets back
down to that base camp, the trailhead area,
that's when she contacts
00:17:55
police and goes in for testing. We have two girls, both
attacked in this same location
00:18:04
three years apart. Both attacked with rocks
as part of this assault. Could these be linked?
00:18:12
Could these be related? NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): 2020. Yavapai County
detectives need help.
00:18:20
DNA research can be very
costly, and it's usually performed by private
labs that specialize
00:18:27
in advanced forensic science. Investigators need money
to carry out this very costly cold case research.
00:18:37
And they get that help from
the neighboring Maricopa County attorney's office. It's called a SAKI Grant,
and it exists to close
00:18:48
unsolved sex assault cases. From the 1990 case,
we had a very solid, unknown male sample of DNA.
00:18:57
Those comparisons were made to
different pieces of evidence in the Cathy Sposito homicide.
00:19:04
And it was very, very likely
that the unknown male DNA from the 1990 sexual
assault kit had also
00:19:12
deposited DNA on
these murder weapons in the Cathy Sposito homicide. Parabon was brought
into the picture
00:19:22
under the Sex Offender
Kit Investigation Grant from Maricopa County. We were able to send some
of her DNA extracts of the--
00:19:34
the rape victim, who was
not murdered, to Parabon Lab to do genetic profiling. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
Scientists at Parabon Nano
00:19:44
Laboratories used the DNA found
at Cathy Sposito's crime scene to create something called
a phenotype snapshot.
00:19:54
Phenotyping is a brand
new scientific technique that can accurately
predict a killer's
00:20:01
physical characteristics. Phenotyping is a different
type of genetic genealogy. What they do is they
take the DNA sample,
00:20:11
and they can tell generally
what color of hair you have, what color of eyes you
have, skin tones, heritage,
00:20:19
regions of the world
that they came from, whether they were Eastern
European or Native
00:20:25
American or African-American. And they can build these
profiles from that, and they can actually get
a picture through this DNA
00:20:34
and possibly give you a sketch
of what they possibly look like. Parabon delivered
a snapshot phenotype
00:20:44
report on April 9, 2020. We predicted with
high confidence that the perpetrator had
light skin, blue-green eyes,
00:20:54
and light brown to blonde hair. They were hopeful that
putting an image out like this
00:21:01
would generate
some leads, but it just didn't really go anywhere. They have tried just
about everything,
00:21:08
and it hasn't worked. But now investigators
have technology on their side with
forensic genetic genealogy.
00:21:15
So they decide, we're gonna
try everything in this path. What do we have to
lose at this point?
00:21:23
NANCY GRACE
(VOICEOVER): Detectives decide to give Parabon
Nano Labs the green light
00:21:27
to conduct investigative
genetic genealogy tests. Six days later, we delivered
a preliminary genetic genealogy
00:21:36
report on April 15, 2020. At that time, we had
only uploaded the profile to the GEDmatch
database, which is
00:21:46
one of two databases that
allows law enforcement to compare against it. And the top match we had
was really quite distant.
00:21:55
It was only 61 centimorgans. So that is maybe a third
cousin if we're lucky, but very
00:22:03
likely, even more distant. So we recommended,
among other things, that we upload to the
Family Tree DNA database.
00:22:10
So most of our research
is building family trees, building them back in time
and then building them
00:22:16
forward, trying to
identify who could be the contributor of that DNA. We're looking for people who
moved close to the crime scene.
00:22:26
Very occasionally it's
someone just passing through, but about 99% of the
time in our cases,
00:22:33
it leads us right back to a
local, somebody who was living very close to the crime scene.
00:22:38
Our genetic genealogists
worked for many months building these trees backward
and forward from these very
00:22:45
distant matches. Ultimately, three of these
matches converged to identify a genetic network based on
a couple with the last name
00:22:54
Bennett, born in the 1700s. That meant that it was necessary
to perform descendancy research
00:23:02
or build forward
from that couple to try to identify
their descendants. As that tree was
built forward in time,
00:23:11
three other very
distant matches, down to 17
centimorgans, were tied into their family descendants.
00:23:19
And ultimately, the genetic
genealogy led to two brothers, who lived in the area of the
crime in the '80s and '90s.
00:23:30
[TENSE MUSIC] When Parabon came up with
the names of Brian Bennett and his brother, to have names
associated with DNA profiles
00:23:44
that until that time had no
name, it was a boost of hope. It was a boost of confidence.
00:23:50
And it was-- it was very
hopeful that we were going to be able to provide the
answer of who did this to Cathy.
00:24:00
[TENSE MUSIC] Where do you
start when you've-- you've gone that many years? I mean, you know, 33 years
from the time this case
00:24:10
started, and a lot of us had
been working on this case for 10 or 11 years at that time.
00:24:15
I mean, first, you're just
kind of like, oh, my god, we've got somewhere to go. Now we just have to dot
the I's and cross the T's.
00:24:21
But then you realize that
dotting the I's and crossing the T's, you know, there's a
lot that has to be done there.
00:24:30
We couldn't say for sure
at that point that it wasn't the brother, but we
found other cases of allegations
00:24:38
of sexual assault against Brian
Bennett in the Yavapai County area, the Prescott
area, and what we call
00:24:44
the Quad City area
from around that time, late '80s and early '90s. He had gone to school here
at Prescott High School.
00:24:52
He would have graduated--
had he graduated from here, he would have graduated, I
believe, in 1989 or 1990.
00:24:58
He was young, 16
or 17 years old. We kind of used that information
to rule out the brother
00:25:04
because he would have
been 14 at that time, which as unlikely as it seems
that a 16-year-old would do
00:25:10
this, it seemed
even more unlikely that a 14-year-old would do it. We learned that he was also
named as a suspect in two
00:25:17
other sexual assault cases. [TENSE MUSIC] One was in Chino Valley, and it
was at a young person's house
00:25:27
party in which he followed a
young woman into the bedroom and sexually assaulted her
while she was in there.
00:25:34
And her friends came in
and broke up the attack, and he went out
the bedroom window.
00:25:38
He was actually
arrested and charged. And we went to trial on
that particular case.
00:25:44
And unfortunately, the
witnesses identified his brother as the suspect, and
the victim identified
00:25:52
Brian Bennett as the suspect. And the jury was
sufficiently confused. And they acquitted him
for that sexual assault.
00:26:02
And then a short
time after that, he was named as a suspect
in another sexual assault
00:26:08
in which he kidnapped
a woman at knifepoint. I kept going to
the police station.
00:26:15
And I was like, you got to
do something about this. Like, this guy's
gonna do it again.
00:26:21
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
The Bloodline Detectives believe they are this close to
identifying a vicious killer.
00:26:28
We find out next
if Brian Bennett is the man responsible for a savage
attack and murder back in 1987.
00:26:37
[TENSE MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
Prescott, Arizona, 2020. Detectives have reopened the
1987 murder of 23-year-old Cathy
00:26:57
Sposito, the beautiful young
woman found beaten dead and sex assaulted in broad daylight.
00:27:05
Now, investigative
genetic genealogists have narrowed the
suspect list down to two brothers, one
of them also linked
00:27:14
to two additional sex assaults. They find this case
from June of 1993. A woman had gone to the
post office in town,
00:27:25
and while she was in there, this
man grabs her by knifepoint, pulls her into his car,
takes her to an area,
00:27:33
and viciously rapes her. He just got very
violent out there. And, you know, at
that point, you know,
00:27:41
he was like, you
know I'm not gonna be able to let you go, right,
because you've seen my face.
00:27:46
I didn't think I was gonna live. And I had my babies that I
wanted to get home to, you know?
00:27:52
And I thought I would
never see them again. I remember him
saying that he was the black sheep of his family.
00:27:59
I remember him saying
that he hated women. And then at that point,
he started to drive.
00:28:07
She complied the whole time. He ended up taking
money from her. He ended up stealing her wedding
ring, put her back in the car,
00:28:16
driving down Girlie Street, and
they happened to be pulled over by Prescott Police Department.
00:28:23
You know, at that
point, he had told me, he says, you better
not make a sound. You better not scream,
anything, or I'll kill you.
00:28:32
And I believe-- I don't
know, I can't say for sure, but I believe that that
police officer did see me.
00:28:38
And then at that point,
he-- he told him, sir, I need you to get
out of the car.
00:28:43
Well, as soon as he
got out of the car, I jumped into the
driver's seat and floored
00:28:48
it all the way into Prescott. And I pulled into JB's parking
lot because there was, like,
00:28:53
all these police
cars following me. So when I stopped, I got
out of the car, which
00:28:59
I couldn't walk at that point,
and I fell onto the concrete, the pavement. And I was just crying.
00:29:09
Like, I was crying. And, you know, I was
just like, help me. And then I told
them what happened.
00:29:18
You know, and I was like,
he raped me, you know? He-- he was trying to kill me. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
Brian Bennett is arrested,
00:29:29
but then he's let go by police. Why? Because there are new
discrepancies in the story
00:29:36
of the key witness. Detectives do not feel they've
got enough evidence to hold him.
00:29:44
They, unfortunately, put
her on a polygraph test, and there was some deception in
that, whether that was her being
00:29:51
extremely nervous because
she was just assaulted or what was going on. So he skated on that.
00:30:00
I kept going to
the police station. And I was like, you got to
do something about this.
00:30:05
Like, this guy's
gonna do it again. You know, I'm afraid he's
gonna get a little kid.
00:30:10
Like, you got to do something. And I said, he had
gotten in my purse. And he saw my license.
00:30:19
And he told me. He was like, I know
where you live. I was very scared. I was scared to do anything.
00:30:30
I was scared that he was
gonna come to the house. I was scared to let my oldest
daughter go out to play.
00:30:38
I was scared to let
her out in the yard. I was scared to walk anywhere. I was scared to go shopping.
00:30:45
I was scared to go to the store. I was like, you know,
wonder if I run into him.
00:30:48
I wonder if I see
him at a restaurant. I wonder if I see
him at a store. Like, you know,
what am I gonna do?
00:30:56
What are you prepared to do? I felt bad for Renee
Sandoval because she's still here in the community.
00:31:04
I wish that he would have
been prosecuted for that case. And it was regretful the way
that it was handled at the time.
00:31:13
[TENSE MUSIC] That was an aha moment for
me because it's like, oh, man, there's a chance that
we can get this solved.
00:31:23
We need to go find him. So then reading through
the rest of the report, they did some
additional forensics
00:31:29
and found out that he'd
killed himself in 1994. It kind of took the air out of
my lungs because we got him,
00:31:38
and now we don't have him. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
Brian Bennett dies by self-inflicted
gunshot, 1994.
00:31:48
It's a devastating blow
to the investigation, but detectives still
must know, is he
00:31:55
the one responsible
for multiple rapes and for Cathy Sposito's
brutal murder? That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives."
00:32:05
[TENSE MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
Prescott, Arizona, 2022. Bloodline Detectives are certain
they know the name of the man
00:32:22
who viciously sex
assaults and murders Cathy Sposito back in 1987. His name, Brian Bennett.
00:32:32
Problem, Bennett is dead from
a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Detectives still must link
him to Cathy Sposito's murder.
00:32:44
Investigators are in a
tough place at this point. They have these two potential
suspects and potential leads
00:32:52
in the case. Brian Scott Bennett is dead. They can't go ask
him for his DNA. So that means they have to
ask his daughter if she'll
00:33:00
give her DNA in this case. And that's an
incredibly hard question to ask somebody who may not have
any idea what her father was
00:33:09
potentially involved in. We approached her about it. She was really
hesitant about it,
00:33:17
but her and her father
had not been on good terms for a long time. Her mother had passed
away years before.
00:33:23
And so they really didn't
have a whole lot of contact. But she was willing to
give us a DNA sample.
00:33:30
NANCY GRACE
(VOICEOVER): Detectives also want a DNA sample from
Brian Bennett's brother
00:33:35
so they can rule him out. Myself, a sergeant, and
the deputy, the case agent on the call, we
hopped on a plane.
00:33:45
We flew out there, met
with Kentucky State Police, and said, OK, we're gonna
go get the brother's DNA.
00:33:51
We approached him. We set up a plan. We were waiting for
him to come around. We spent a day and a half
waiting for him to come--
00:33:58
come back. He was working on
a remote job site. And as he pulled into the
driveway, a whole bunch of us
00:34:04
swarmed in on him and took
him into custody and said-- we walked up to him and
said, here's who we are.
00:34:11
We're from the Yavapai
County Sheriff's Office in Prescott, Arizona. We are here, and
we want your DNA.
00:34:16
And he said no and heck no
and every other cuss word. And we handed him the
search warrant and said,
00:34:23
we are going to take
your DNA sample. We are going to take
a swab from you. It's gonna happen
one of two ways.
00:34:29
You're either gonna
comply with this, or we're gonna take
you down to the jail, and we're gonna
strap you in a chair,
00:34:33
and we're gonna take your DNA. We have a warrant signed from
a judge here in Kentucky.
00:34:38
And so then he went ahead
and gave us a DNA sample. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The DNA
sample reveals Brian Bennett's
00:34:49
brother is not a match. Detectives now focus on their
main suspect, Brian Bennett.
00:34:56
And they get a court-ordered
grant to have his body exhumed, dug up, so another
DNA sample can be
00:35:04
extracted from his dead body. We show up. We serve the search
warrant on the cemetery.
00:35:13
Somebody to come in, dig
him up, dig everything up. We opened up the casket. He was still in
relatively good shape.
00:35:22
Pretty mummified. There was not a
whole lot left of him except for skeletal remains.
00:35:27
So we had a big tent set
up, and they extracted those DNA pieces of bone. We took a lot of parts
and a lot of teeth,
00:35:39
and then we put everything back. We also did find the .22 bullet
that he had shot himself with.
00:35:46
It was inside the skull cavity. And so when we were
done collecting-- or the anthropologists were
done collecting their samples,
00:35:53
we put everything back in the
casket, and we closed it back up, sealed it back up, and--
00:35:59
and reburied him. That DNA sample
was then sent to two labs, Arizona
Department of Public
00:36:08
Safety and Marshall University. Both of those labs were
able to successfully extract DNA samples from Brian's
remains in February 2023.
00:36:20
And in March 2023, the
match was finally confirmed. [TENSE MUSIC] Brian Scott Bennett was
solid unknown male DNA profile
00:36:32
from the 1990
sexual assault case and also a major
contributor on the murder weapons to the
Cathy Sposito case.
00:36:44
A call just came
out of the blue. It was a sheriff's detective. And he introduced himself.
00:36:52
And then he said that they
worked the case through DNA. It took me back to
being that 20-year-old
00:37:04
girl that that happened to. And just all the
memories of what happened flooded back because I always
thought it was just me.
00:37:18
I didn't know that there
were other victims. I never knew that. And then to learn that he killed
someone, and this girl was--
00:37:31
I mean, she had her whole life. And he just killed her. This case would
not be solved without
00:37:41
forensic genetic genealogy. And we see this now
time and time again. And I think my favorite part
about genealogy being used
00:37:49
in this way is that people who
thought they were gonna get away with something that happened 30
years ago are now being caught.
00:37:55
I think this is the way that
cold cases that sit on a shelf are going to be solved.
00:38:01
And it takes agencies like
Yavapai County Sheriff's Office to invest in forensic
genetic genealogy
00:38:08
because they are seeing this
pay off time and time again. I don't believe Cathy's murder
or the other three rapes
00:38:15
would have been solved
without this tool. [TENSE MUSIC] The evidence that was
preserved in this case
00:38:23
proved to be very crucial in us
being able to obtain samples, for us being able to
look at things like DNA.
00:38:31
In 1987, when this
crime was committed, that wasn't even something that
detectives were conceptualizing.
00:38:40
Investigators, as
time went on, assess what technology, what
advances could be applied to solving this case.
00:38:50
I think suicide was an easy
way for him the get off that he never had to face Cathy's mom.
00:38:57
He never had to
face the families or any of these other victims. And he did have to face
one of them in trial,
00:39:04
and he was acquitted. Personally, I think that
that's an easy way to get off. However, that probably was the
best outcome for other people
00:39:13
that were out there
that were never victims because this guy was a monster. And him taking his own life
prevented that from happening
00:39:20
any more than it already did. But who knows the untold
horror that could have occurred had he gone on living?
00:39:29
I couldn't be more proud of
the people who worked on this. For what they had
available to them in 1987,
00:39:37
they did a-- a tremendous
job of preserving what needed to be preserved so that
we could get this answer,
00:39:43
you know, all these
decades later. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
Police share the news
00:39:50
with Brian Bennett's
sex assault survivors and with Cathy Sposito's
family, the case
00:39:57
finally solved after 33 years. Well, I was shocked,
and I was surprised, especially hearing his age.
00:40:08
For years, we always thought
it was something personal, somebody, you know, close
to Cathy who did that,
00:40:14
maybe somebody who liked her. I just can't let this
experience, this monster, keep me from enjoying life.
00:40:35
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER):
The lives of crime victims are never the same after. That's how it is for
survivor Renee Sandoval.
00:40:43
Only her courage and her prayers
see her through the nightmare that she lives, a
nightmare that never
00:40:51
really ends, even though
justice of sorts is found. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for being with us
here at "Bloodline Detectives."
00:41:02
[TENSE MUSIC]