00:00:00
[MUSIC PLAYING] NANCY GRACE: Cherry
Hills, Colorado, 1981. The body of 34-year-old
Sylvia Quayle
00:00:17
discovered by her own
father in her home. GRANT GROSGEBAUER: He
opens the front door.
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He sees that she
is on the ground. She's naked from the waist down. Her shirt is pulled violently
over her head pinning her arms.
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And at that point in time, she
has a cloth thrown on her face. NANCY GRACE: Once
police arrived,
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they discover Sylvia
not only sex-assaulted but murdered, shot in the
head and stabbed in the back.
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The small town of
Cherry Hills is reeling, shaken by the violent crime. This is the only
murder that has ever
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happened in this small town. It's a city that's
right outside of Denver, but it's not a place
where people get murdered.
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NANCY GRACE: This is the
story of Sylvia Quayle, and how after 40
years, groundbreaking
00:01:12
forensic technology
finally solves the mystery of her murder. I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives."
00:01:22
[THEME MUSIC] Cherry Hills,
Colorado, a small town about 10 miles south of Denver.
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JOHN KELLNER: It's a place where
you find a lot of big homes, a lot of people who
are very wealthy.
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And it's just not a place where
you would see a lot of crime, especially back in the 1980s.
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And that's why when
this murder happened, when Sylvia Quayle
was killed, it really shocked the community.
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JO HAMIT: She was wonderful. She kind of took
me under her wing. She always made sure that
we confided in each other
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and we were like friends. Sylvia was very loving, very
caring, loved my parents.
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She was close to my
parents and always wanted to take care of them. That's part of the
reason why she wanted
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to live next door to them. So they were getting ready to
retire when she was killed,
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and she used to cook meals for
them and that sort of thing. NANCY GRACE: August
3, 1981, just
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before they go to bed, Sylvia
Quayle and her sister Joe talk on the phone. It would be the last time
they ever speak to each other.
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She speaks to her
sister that evening just before going to bed. The next morning,
though, her father
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comes over because
typically they have coffee together
every morning, and he finds her in
a terrible state.
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He opens the front door. He sees that she
is on the ground. Her legs are spread open.
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She's naked from the waist down. Her shirt is pulled
violently over her head, pinning her arms.
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And at that point in time, she
has a cloth thrown on her face. When the dad gets
there, he was obviously
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embarrassed and ashamed and
horrified at what he saw, and so he moved the
cloth from her face
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down to her vaginal area. And when the police
get on scene, they're able to move the cloth
back up to her face to recreate
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the scene as it was. MITCH MORRISSEY: She had
suffered stab wounds. She had suffered
a gunshot wound.
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And of course, she had
been sexually assaulted so her clothing was off. They called in
all their troops,
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everybody they really could to
help process this crime scene. They also brought
in the Colorado
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Bureau of Investigation,
what we call CBI. Really, the forensic
experts at the time.
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And they were the
ones that really led the charge on collecting the
physical evidence at the scene.
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When investigators got
there, it was pretty clear what happened, that
this was a murder tied
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to a sexual assault. And
what the rest of the house showed is that this person
snuck in through a window.
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It looks like he popped off a
screen, pried open a window, and came through Sylvia's house.
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It appears that at some point,
the assailant might have even fired a shot through the window
and actually struck Sylvia
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Quayle in the head
with what later turned out to be a 22-caliber bullet. NANCY GRACE: Cherry Hills Police
began to establish a timeline
00:04:43
from the night before. One thing is immediately
clear, Sylvia Quayle's killer made it a point to stop
her from calling for help.
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The telephone wires had
been torn down outside. So the individual used a hose to
go up along over the telephone
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lines and tore
them down so Sylvia would not have been able
to contact anyone by phone.
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NANCY GRACE: This is the first
and only recorded murder in a small town of Cherry Hills.
00:05:20
The local police
department looks to outside agencies for help. They walked around the house,
and they could tell there
00:05:28
were some movement with Sylvia. Specifically, when they
got to her bedroom, they saw a big pool of
blood on top of her pillow.
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And the pillow and the bed
sort of backs up to a window. And they saw that that window
was open about 2 to 3 inches.
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And through that window,
there was a small bullet hole protruding not only
through the screen
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but also through the curtains. They assume that's
the first action that the killer took, was
that he shot her in the head,
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once, maybe twice. Because from there, you can see
blood tracing from her bedroom,
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then into the living room. Where she's ultimately
found is in the living room. NANCY GRACE: Police continue
to focus on the crime scene.
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Investigators have theories
but not much evidence to back them up. Meanwhile, Sylvia Quayle's
father remains traumatized.
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My mother and I just
kind of watched him retreat into himself over the years. It was very hard for him.
00:06:22
My mother, on the other
hand, she and I talked about the crime and all that. And it was therapeutic
for us, but we could never
00:06:30
get my dad to talk about it. And as time went by and
the crime was not solved, we didn't have any
idea who did this,
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and you couldn't help but
looking at everybody you knew and wondering if they did it.
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I mean, that's a
terrible thing to say, but you just couldn't
help wondering who did it.
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NANCY GRACE: A violent
killer on the loose, a small town living in fear,
hard evidence, hard to come by.
00:06:59
Can police catch a killer
before he strikes again? That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives."
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[AUDIO LOGO] 1981, Arapahoe County,
Colorado, the mutilated body of Sylvia Quayle, aged
34, discovered by her dad
00:07:26
at her Cherry Hills home. Sylvia, sex-attacked,
shot in the head, and stabbed in the back.
00:07:36
Her brutal attack has
the community in shock. Especially chilling,
the fact that the killer
00:07:45
cut the phone lines
coming from Sylvia's home before he makes his escape. There was a lot of notable
things that they found.
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Of course, they
found Sylvia's body, and they collected the carpet
underneath her buttocks,
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so basically the place where
if there had been an assailant that had left something
behind, and at the time
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they're not talking about
DNA but if the assailant had left something behind they
might find evidence of it
00:08:12
on that carpet. They didn't just collect
obvious items from her body. They took windows,
window frames.
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They went to great
detail to take fingerprints,
anything that could have been potential evidence.
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In those days, though,
they weren't looking for DNA. They were looking for
different sources of serology.
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So they call them robust
sources, which are her bloods, or saliva, or semen. NANCY GRACE: Arapahoe County
Sheriffs have very little
00:08:40
evidence from the crime scene. They hope the results of
Sylvia Quayle's autopsy will give them a
much needed break.
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What they found was
that she had at least one or two gunshots to
the top of her head
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from a smaller caliber weapon. And then she had three
stab wounds in her back, but the rest of her body
it was bruised all over.
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It was bloody. She had some bruises
around her neck. She had bruises on her
elbows and her knees
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and her waist and her hips. And it was clear that she had
gone through hell that night.
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NANCY GRACE: Sylvia
Quayle's autopsy determined she actually
dies from the stab wounds, not the gunshot.
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The coroner also retrieves DNA. But in 1981, identifying
that DNA is impossible.
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In the meantime, it's back
to basics for investigators. They build a list
of people, mostly
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men, who knew Sylvia Quayle. There weren't eyewitnesses,
there weren't ear-witnesses
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to what happened. So they talked with
Sylvia's friends and tried to develop
perhaps a motive
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for someone wanting to do this. And frankly, throughout
those initial years and then
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in the 20 years or so until
they developed a DNA profile, there were many suspects.
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You always start
with who you know. Generally, you work
what we call inside out,
00:10:02
meaning those
closest to someone, whether it be a
boyfriend or a girlfriend or a spouse, coworkers,
anyone that could
00:10:09
obviously have a connection. I know the original
investigation they interviewed uncles of
Sylvia's, family members,
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associates of Sylvia's. A lot of people
they track down, a lot of people they asked
to do lie detector tests
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across the board. Ultimately, none
of those suspects really panned out though. While some of them may have had
motive, none of them matched
00:10:31
the profile that was on
the scene, none of them had the correct
blood type for what
00:10:34
they developed in the '90s. Does she have anybody that
she doesn't get along with?
00:10:40
Does she have any ex-boyfriends
that potentially would do something like that to her?
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And actually, she did
have a man that she had severed a relationship with,
who had been abusive to her
00:10:55
in the past. So that person then
becomes a suspect. And you try to find out
where they were at the time
00:11:03
that this brutal attack
and homicide took place to see if they potentially
could be the person
00:11:09
that did this to Sylvia Quayle. NANCY GRACE: Investigators are
still building a suspect list
00:11:15
when they get
surprising news, a death row inmate confesses
to the murder of 34-year-old Sylvia Quayle.
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Ottis Toole was a man who was
sentenced to death in Texas, a man who I believe had been
convicted of multiple murders
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but confessed to almost
100 different murders while he was sitting
in jail in Texas.
00:11:41
And it became a thing, really,
where detectives, troopers, police from all over the country
would come and talk to Toole.
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And they would ask him questions
about an unsolved murder and, sure enough, that man
would confess to that crime,
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oftentimes after seeing
evidence of the crime, after being shown
crime scene photos
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and being told many of
the aspects of the crime. Mr. Toole decided that the
way to keep from being killed,
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the way to keep from being
sent to the penitentiary even, he stayed in
this county jail
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with this sheriff
that would provide him with the information
about different cases
00:12:23
that occurred throughout
the United States. And he'd pretty
much say anything for a pack of cigarettes.
00:12:31
In 1993, they
actually, the DNA that was done on Sylvia
Quayle's case proved absolutely that Toole was
not involved in any way
00:12:41
in killing her. This was a totally
false confession. And, unfortunately, it
slowed the investigation,
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but at the time, there
really were no other leads. NANCY GRACE: 1981, believe it
or not, detectives obtain DNA.
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But at the time, they don't have
the right tools to identify it. Fast forward 19 years to 2000,
DNA technology has advanced.
00:13:12
Investigators enter the DNA
sample into the National DNA database, CODIS. The technical
definition of a cold case
00:13:22
is just something unsolved
after three years. But in this case,
because there's not
00:13:26
a lot of crime in
Cherry Hill's village, this case was looked
at all the time. And they actively investigated
this case up until the time
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Ottis Toole confessed. And then once he
withdrew his confession, we started it up again in our
office, probably the late '80s
00:13:39
through 1995. That's when we were
able to exclude some suspects based on the
very first typing of DNA.
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There is one early
suspect in this case, and it was an ex-boyfriend that
Sylvia had been intimate with
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and had allegedly
in the past sexually assaulted her and
possibly even broken into her home in the past.
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So, of course, part
of the investigation focused on that man. A DNA sample was
taken from him.
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And his DNA did
not match the DNA that was found in the
home that was deposited on the body of Sylvia Quayle.
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And on those items around
her, that was not his DNA. A good cold case
investigator is saying,
00:14:23
OK, I don't have any new
leads, I don't have any tips, but let's go back
to that evidence
00:14:28
and see if there
is something now that we can learn
from that evidence that we've been holding,
preserving as technology
00:14:38
advances that we're
getting the latest techniques done on this case. And in 2000 when the
testing was done, now
00:14:46
they had DNA that
could be entered into the national
database system. It's called CODIS.
00:14:52
It allows a DNA analyst to have
a forensic sample from a crime scene, compare it to individuals
that are in that database
00:15:04
because they're rapists,
murderers, or just criminals. And that database
has grown over time.
00:15:11
It has multiple millions
of people in it. And it runs constantly,
so if you do it in 2000
00:15:19
and somebody gets into
the database in 2011, you're going to get a match. And that's going to give
you a lead and a suspect
00:15:28
that you can then potentially
prove committed the crime. NANCY GRACE: Investigators
have high hopes for a DNA match
00:15:36
but their optimism
turns to disappointment. That CODIS profile never hit. And really, what that means is
that the killer was either dead
00:15:46
or certainly lying
low and not getting into trouble where
they would end up in the database themselves.
00:15:53
When a case goes
cold, you've run out of investigative
leads you go down every lead that you can.
00:15:59
And once that lead is closed,
you kind of have to wait. And that's kind of what
happened with Sylvia's case
00:16:06
as they investigated
everything that they could and with the DNA in the
system and being run
00:16:13
on a certain schedule,
that's all we could do, was just sit and wait and
wait for something to pop up.
00:16:19
So there was nothing else
to do in the case but wait. NANCY GRACE: The 1981 murder
of 34-year-old Sylvia Quayle
00:16:27
goes cold, and it stays
that way nearly 40 years. Next on "Bloodline Detectives"--
can brand new, groundbreaking,
00:16:37
scientific DNA
technology crack the case and finally bring peace
to Sylvia Quayle's family?
00:16:47
[AUDIO LOGO] Arapahoe County, Colorado,
2020, investigators reopen for the second time
the 1981 sex assault
00:17:05
and murder of 34-year-old
Sylvia Quayle. Their best hope? To use the latest
forensic science
00:17:13
to identify a DNA sample. JOHN KELLNER: As many years
passed and this case remains
00:17:21
completely cold, we've got
a new scientific advancement in genetic genealogy,
a way for us
00:17:28
to not rely solely on that
database to give us a hit, but to go out and actively
search for somebody who might
00:17:35
have been responsible using
all the different publicly available genetic genealogy
databases out there.
00:17:42
And that's what Crime Stoppers
and United Data Connect did. NANCY GRACE: United Data
Connect is cofounded
00:17:49
by veteran prosecutor
former District Attorney Mitch Morrissey,
an expert in DNA technology.
00:17:57
Morrissey introduced the
first DNA evidence used in a criminal trial in Denver. One of the most important
things that happened
00:18:08
in this case when
they reopened it and the testing was done in
2000, and it was done well,
00:18:14
and the young woman who did
the DNA analysis in the case is somebody that I knew because
she worked in the Denver lab.
00:18:23
She knew it was a
single male sample that she had in some
of the different things
00:18:29
that she tested. And as techniques and
technology changes, she kept that case in mind.
00:18:36
She was now up at a lab
in Jefferson County, and we had solved
two of her cases.
00:18:42
And I was just talking to her
one time, when I was picking up items of evidence, and
she said, you know, Mitch,
00:18:48
there is a case in
Cherry Hills Village that I worked on
when I was at CBI. And that is a perfect
case for you guys.
00:18:57
That has the amount of
DNA you're going to need. It's a single-source sample. And I think you can
solve that case.
00:19:06
And I think the reason she never
forgot it is because of the way that Sylvia Quayle died.
00:19:12
DNA analysts have hearts too,
and those things impact them. And she knew it
was a brutal case.
00:19:19
GRANT GROSGEBAUER: In
2019, the case ultimately had been cold for many
years until a couple
00:19:23
of different agencies
got involved. United Data Connect was a newer
genetic genealogy company.
00:19:28
They partner with
Denver Crime Stoppers and ultimately reached out
to by Cherry Hills Village.
00:19:34
MATT HANAGAN: Metro Denver
Crime Stoppers had been really looking for ways to be helpful.
00:19:39
And one of the things
that they landed on was helping provide
financial assistance for some
00:19:45
of these cold cases and
the biological testing that sometimes police
departments can't afford.
00:19:50
For Metro Denver
Crime Stoppers, it was an investment in solving
homicides that, one, was sort
00:19:56
of new technology and two,
was a really good way for them to partner with the community,
which they always have.
00:20:03
We had to convince Detective
Abeyta and the people at Cherry Hills Village
that we could step in
00:20:10
and help them solve this case. I then started calling the
Cherry Hills Village Police
00:20:17
Department, specifically
Detective Abeyta to see if we could help
them solve the case.
00:20:26
With the Metro Crime
Stoppers and Data Connect, they work very closely together.
00:20:32
And the Metro Crime Stoppers
actually was funding some of these cold cases. So we met.
00:20:40
We sat down with Crime
Stoppers and Data Connect, and we all came to an agreement
to let them do their analysis
00:20:47
and let them run with the
case and see where it led. And they got
together to determine
00:20:55
we have this identifiable
profile based on the semen collected from the scene. Now, how do we match
that to a person?
00:21:02
It's such a
positive development when private companies like
Metro Crime Stoppers and United
00:21:09
Data Connect become partners
and help police departments, like the one in Cherry Hills.
00:21:15
Their combined efforts rest
on a revolutionary forensic new tool, genetic genealogy.
00:21:23
This may be the last chance to
find Sylvia Quayle's killer. Meanwhile, detectives
keep Sylvia's sister, Jo,
00:21:32
updated on the progress. Every year, the Cherry
Hills Police department send me a letter to tell me
what the status of the case was,
00:21:41
which was very helpful. They've always been
very supportive. MITCH MORRISSEY: It holds out
hope that there's still people
00:21:49
that care in law
enforcement, and there's still people that are looking. And they're looking
every chance they get,
00:21:56
and they're using the
latest techniques. Detective Abeyta, of course,
wanted me to meet the police
00:22:04
chief, all of his superiors. They were on board. They were trying to solve
this case for years.
00:22:10
They wanted to do the latest. They didn't really
know about it, but we explained it all to 'em.
00:22:16
We sat down and told
them what we would do. They were able to then provide
me with some of the evidence,
00:22:24
and I was able to ship it off. And I got it sequenced. When you sequenced DNA, that's
different than the techniques
00:22:32
that were used in 2000. You can then search commercial
databases that are out there.
00:22:38
Many people think of
Ancestry, 23andMe. Well, there are two. There's one called GEDmatch and
there's one called Family Tree
00:22:47
DNA that allow law enforcement
to use the DNA of the people that are in there. You find out people
that may be related
00:22:55
that are in those databases,
and what you're looking for is people that are cousins.
00:23:01
And on average, people
have about 800 cousins out to the fourth cousin range. People that are concerned about
us using DNA in these databases
00:23:11
to find people they've
never even met, people that don't even
live in the same town,
00:23:17
sometimes don't live in
the same state or country, but they are
extremely important.
00:23:23
They upload their DNA,
and they say, yes, law enforcement can use it. Then you start to build
the family tree down.
00:23:31
You've built it up to that
most recent common ancestor. Now you're building
it down to try
00:23:38
to find someone that's
living at the time that your crime occurred. So you're looking at
wedding announcements.
00:23:45
You're looking at
obituaries, where they name the people that are still left. It's great for our
genealogist to then
00:23:54
build those family trees. NANCY GRACE: Mitch
Morrissey and his team put the science of
genetic genealogy to work.
00:24:02
They process thousands of
names, looking for a match. Finally, a breakthrough. In this case, I think we had
over 3,000 people in the tree,
00:24:13
but we got it down
to a point where it was one of two brothers. One was local. He lived in the town
and worked in the town
00:24:24
right next to Cherry
Hills Village. There's a town called
Inglewood, which is another small town that is
part of the Denver metro area.
00:24:33
He lived and worked
in that area. The other brother lived in a
town in Nebraska, a small town
00:24:42
there. Now you've got an investigative
lead based on DNA, based on genealogy. And at that point, we give
it over to the investigators.
00:24:54
MATT HANAGAN: In any cold case,
we do a full evidence review. The first thing that I do
on any case to make sure
00:25:00
that all the evidence
exists, that you believe exists, to make sure you
know what you're working
00:25:04
with, obviously, a
review of the crime scene and the crime scene photos,
which, of course, in this case
00:25:11
are extremely brutal. Two very good
investigators in this case-- Detective Abeyta was
still on the case,
00:25:19
and he was getting the
assistance of the Arapahoe County DA's Office. They have a cold
case investigator
00:25:27
named Matt Hanagan. And between the two
of those individuals, they started running
down the leads.
00:25:34
They were able to get a DNA
sample from the brother that was local. The brother had a cup of coffee
with a boss of some kind.
00:25:44
When he got up to go back to
work, he left his cup there. The superior collected it.
00:25:55
The DNA that was left
on the coffee cup did not match the DNA
that was left in the crime
00:26:03
scene and Sylvia Quayle. Now we were down to one
suspect, and that suspect lived in Nebraska.
00:26:12
JOHN KELLNER: I remember
being told for the first time that we thought we
knew who did it.
00:26:18
And that man's name
was David Anderson. And when I heard
that name, of course, he wasn't a name that made
any sort of connection
00:26:26
to our case files. It wasn't a person who
had been interviewed or was a suspect at
any point in time.
00:26:31
But David Anderson was a
man who, in the early 1980s, had been arrested some eight
times in the Denver metro
00:26:38
area, who'd been suspected
of home break-ins, even breaking into a
home through the window,
00:26:45
just like Sylvia Quayle's home. 40 years after Sylvia
Quayle's brutal murder, Cherry Hill detectives
finally have a name--
00:26:56
David Anderson. But to be certain
Anderson is the killer, they need a DNA sample from him.
00:27:05
That's next on
"Bloodline Detectives." [AUDIO LOGO] [OMINOUS MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Cherry
Hills, Colorado, 2021,
00:27:22
police are closing
in on David Anderson, the prime suspect in the
'81 murder and sex assault
00:27:29
of Sylvia Quayle. Thanks to the science
of genetic genealogy, detectives already have
a DNA match to Anderson
00:27:37
from the original crime scene. But now they need to
confirm that match by getting new DNA from him.
00:27:46
JO HAMIT: My parents were
both deceased at that time. So it was just me
and my husband.
00:27:50
Two detectives had come to
tell me that they had a lead, and then they explained
to me a little bit
00:27:58
about the forensic
genealogy and all that and how they were trying
to narrow it down.
00:28:03
And then they contacted
me a second time and told me they had narrowed
it down to one family.
00:28:10
MITCH MORRISSEY: The town in
Nebraska where this suspect was Cozad, Nebraska, a small town.
00:28:17
We knew where he was. We knew he had a
criminal record. We knew he had been in trouble
in Colorado as late as 1989.
00:28:27
So his criminal record
corresponded to around the time that Sylvia Quayle was murdered,
and all of the genealogy
00:28:39
and DNA was pointing at him. So the question was, who's
going to get out there? And how are they
going to do this?
00:28:47
MATT HANAGAN: Working again
with United Data Connect, they have investigators. In particular, in
this case, Bob Fuller,
00:28:53
who was a long-time criminal
investigator here in the Denver metro area, agrees to
go to Cozad, Nebraska,
00:29:00
where we now know David
Anderson is living. We know he's living
with his wife. We know where he works.
00:29:07
We are working in
coordination with the Dawson County Sheriff's Office. MITCH MORRISSEY: Bob was an
outstanding police officer,
00:29:16
and he was an outstanding
investigator for the Denver District Attorney's Office.
00:29:21
He knew how to do surveillance. He knew how to collect DNA. He knew how to protect
people's rights
00:29:28
and do it in a
constitutional and legal way. He started his
surveillance the first day.
00:29:34
He also established a rapport
with the police department. He found out where
the individual
00:29:40
was living, if he was married. NANCY GRACE:
Investigator Bob Fuller has one goal and one goal only--
00:29:49
to obtain a DNA sample from
David Anderson's trash. MATT HANAGAN: It's determined
that David Anderson
00:29:56
lives in an apartment complex. There is a community trash bin. So you walk down the hall.
00:30:01
You go into a trash
room, essentially. There's a large dumpster. You throw your
trash bags in there.
00:30:08
MITCH MORRISSEY: What
Bob was able to do then-- and he talked to
the police chief.
00:30:12
They got their public works
that collect the trash to take the dumpster down
to a warehouse where
00:30:20
they then went through all of
the trash and the dumpster. And what they were able to find
were white plastic garbage bags
00:30:28
that had been tied and sealed. And in a couple of
those bags, there was mail addressed to the
individual we were looking for.
00:30:38
He selects items
which he knows, based on his
training experience, are good DNA items,
which, you know,
00:30:44
cans, bottles, things
that you put your lips on. Those items are collected by me
and then rushed straight back
00:30:52
to the Cherry Hills
Village Police Department, where they're
turned and sent to the DNA lab.
00:30:57
They are rush tested. And on a Vanilla Coke can,
David Anderson is a 100% match.
00:31:04
[OMINOUS MUSIC] When analysts at the Colorado
Bureau of Investigation looked into that DNA
profile from the Coke can,
00:31:12
they found that DNA profile
matched to the exclusion of every other living
person on this planet,
00:31:18
that that DNA profile
matched the semen that was found inside Sylvia
Quayle from her assailant.
00:31:27
They found that the
semen from the carpet matched the person who
had left the DNA profile,
00:31:33
and the Coke can matched
to David Anderson. They even found that
the Y-STR profile--
00:31:40
now a Y-STR profile is
really the male profile associated with David Anderson. It's unique to his male
lineage, that matched the saliva
00:31:52
that was found on her breast. So we had a clear
connection to David Anderson not only as our suspect,
but as our killer.
00:32:02
It was time for an arrest. NANCY GRACE: The DNA
match is confirmed. Police move quickly
to arrest David
00:32:11
Anderson 40 years after
he murdered Sylvia Quayle. David Anderson is ultimately
arrested soon after we
00:32:20
get this positive DNA hit. And luckily for us, he agrees
to tell his side of the story.
00:32:28
He's brought back
to the Dawson County Sheriff's Office
to be interviewed by me and Detective Abeyta.
00:32:55
We showed him a photo of
Sylvia in the pile of photos with other people that were
just random people that we
00:33:03
selected from Motor
Vehicles' database who looked similar to Sylvia. He said no, no to
everyone, including Sylvia.
00:33:13
I said, well, would it
surprise you if your DNA was found on a dead girl? And he said, my
first thought would
00:33:18
be that I was being set up. And at that time, I said,
well, let me help you out.
00:33:22
It's your semen. He said that the DNA was
inside of her before I did. MATT HANAGAN: I
knew at that time
00:33:56
he wasn't going to confess. I just felt that Lenny
and I weren't going to get any further than we had.
00:34:01
GRANT GROSGEBAUER: What
he told us was interesting because he was stuck
with that answer
00:34:05
ultimately throughout the trial. But he told us he didn't
know Sylvia Quayle. Even when confronted
with the fact
00:34:10
that his DNA was found not
only on her, but inside of her, he continued to say he didn't
have a consensual relationship
00:34:16
with her. He never dated her. He was never at her
house, and he didn't know how his DNA got there.
00:34:22
That is almost as
good as a confession. When you have the person's
DNA in an intimate place,
00:34:29
like we had in this case, for
him to deny that he knew her, that he'd ever
been in her house,
00:34:36
that he'd ever ejaculated in her
house, to deny all those things is very important
because the DNA proves
00:34:43
he did all of those things. LENNY ABEYTA: After
the interview, that's when we present him with
the search warrant for his DNA.
00:34:50
And we take two cotton
swabs, and we rubbed them on the inside of his cheek. And then those are sealed.
00:34:56
And when we get back to
Denver, we sent them to the lab for a confirmation. [OMINOUS MUSIC]
00:35:12
GRANT GROSGEBAUER: They had the
Vanilla Coke can profile, which was consistent with
all the other DNA
00:35:15
profiles they were developing. But really, they wanted
to get the buccal swab. When they got the buccal swab
from the defendant's cheek,
00:35:21
they confirmed it was the
defendant, essentially to the exclusion of all
other people on the planet
00:35:26
or who have ever lived
because the numbers were so astronomically high. And what they found is that
every piece of evidence
00:35:32
that they tested over the years
with different technologies all came back to the
same profile, that
00:35:37
of David Anderson,
all these years later. After his arrest, the defendant
pled not guilty to the charges.
00:35:43
And so he was facing two
counts of murder, murder in the first degree by
way of premeditation,
00:35:48
meaning he planned it, he meant
to do this, and murder by means of a felony murder, which
means during the act
00:35:54
of some other
crime, in this case sexual assault or burglary,
Sylvia Quayle ended up dead.
00:36:01
The "Bloodline Detectives"
Believe they've closed the case against David Anderson.
00:36:06
But as we see next, his murder
trial does not go as planned. [AUDIO LOGO] [OMINOUS MUSIC]
00:36:20
March, 2022, Arapahoe
County, Colorado, David Anderson on trial
for the 1981 sex assault
00:36:29
and murder of Sylvia Quayle. Anderson has been
tracked by investigators to his home in Nebraska.
00:36:36
His DNA obtained from a
Vanilla Coke can in the trash, and it matches the
DNA found at the crime
00:36:45
scene 41 years earlier. When Mr. Anderson
went to trial, you know, we had everything
that you would hope
00:36:53
for in a cold case prosecution. You had a clear DNA profile. We had a clear chain of custody.
00:37:00
We had evidence
putting this man, not just through his
DNA at the scene, but in the Denver metro
area in the early '80s.
00:37:09
And this was clearly
our guy, and we are going to hold him accountable. And we're going to ask
a jury to do just that.
00:37:16
Any time you have
a jury trial where 12 people have to agree
on something unanimously,
00:37:21
it's difficult. I can tell you as a
former felony prosecutor, no matter how airtight you think
your case is, you can never
00:37:30
predict what a jury will do. And that is exactly
what happened in the trial of David Anderson,
his first trial at least.
00:37:40
One juror did not agree with
the other members of the jury. The judge had to
declare a mistrial.
00:37:49
Arapahoe County prosecutors are
so confident in their evidence, they strike a new jury
almost immediately.
00:37:58
We were told after the
fact, because we're not a part of the jury
deliberations,
00:38:01
that they were heavily
leaning towards our side. We retried the case
about three months later.
00:38:06
JOHN KELLNER: We were not going
to let this case go cold again. We were not going to let
Mr. Anderson escape justice.
00:38:13
So we took this case back to
trial, convince a jury of 12 that he was guilty beyond
a reasonable doubt,
00:38:19
and they returned a verdict
of guilty to all charges. After a five or six-day
trial and an hour and a half
00:38:27
of deliberation, the jury
came back with guilty to both counts of murder. I know the victim's
sister who was still here
00:38:32
was able to see that verdict. Her father, her mother have
not been around for many years,
00:38:36
and I think this
pained them greatly to not know where their
daughter's killer was,
00:38:41
to not have any
justice in that sense. Now her family was able to
see that the justice system not
00:38:49
only kept working
this case, but was going to hold him accountable. And at 64, 65 years
old, Mr. Anderson
00:38:59
is going to spend the rest
of his life behind bars. And DNA proved that he deserves
to spend the rest of his life
00:39:07
behind bars. [SENTIMENTAL MUSIC] JO HAMIT: When we
got the conviction, it was just like
this huge weight
00:39:15
was lifted off my shoulders. I felt so different. I was so relieved, and I
was so filled with gratitude
00:39:22
for all the work
that these people had done to make this happen. Mitch and his group, the
police, Crime Stoppers,
00:39:30
all of those people,
they all worked together. And I just have nothing
but admiration for them
00:39:36
and the work that they do. They really looked at my sister
as a person, not just a case,
00:39:42
and I appreciated that. In the murder
of Sylvia Quayle, bloodline detectives
reflect on the power
00:39:50
of genetic genealogy
used to solve Sylvia's murder after 41 years. Genetic genealogy has taken
it to a whole new level for us.
00:40:03
And so my message for anybody
who thinks they've gotten away with a heinous crime like
that, who thinks that just
00:40:09
because they've laid low
for a number of years, is that we're coming for them. And we've been
successful at it before.
00:40:16
We're going to keep doing
it until we get them all. Going through this process
with forensic genealogy,
00:40:23
people need to know
that there is hope. There is a lot of hope
to solve these cases.
00:40:30
A vicious, calculated
sex attack and murder ignites a family that
will never forget,
00:40:37
investigators who will not
quit, and a partnership of scientists, citizen
crime fighters,
00:40:44
and law enforcement who all
joined forces to support the bloodline detectives. Genetic genealogy, utilized
on behalf of Sylvia Quayle's
00:40:56
family and hundreds of
others, growing by the day, emerges as a valuable
tool to obtain justice.
00:41:06
I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us here
on "Bloodline Detectives." [SENTIMENTAL MUSIC]
00:41:26
[AUDIO LOGO] [THEME MUSIC]