20/20 - The Code Breakers

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

David Muir investigates how cutting-edge forensic DNA technology has led to long-awaited justice in two murder cases that remained unsolved for decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight we take you inside two cases. Two young women both brutally murdered in their homes. The killers in each case evading police for decades. In one case, a mother just 19 years old, she was engaged to be married. Her fiance, who was about to marry her, adopt her daughter, he gets home and he immediately notices something is wrong. There's blood smeared on the stairway. The killer had attacked her in the bedroom. There was handprints of her trying to hold the door closed and she just wasn't

strong enough. Another case in Texas, the beloved teacher, her whole future ahead of her. Drove in to Memphis. She just started a new school. She was loving teaching her students. She was in a very good place. Now what was your murder state? What's going on? Oh, he's been murdered. What did your daughter do? He's been murdered! You remember walking in and what you discovered? I remember walking into the bathroom and seeing her body on the floor. She'd been handcuffed. That's correct. She'd been handcuffed with her hands behind her back.

There were about 36 different wounds on her body. She put up a fight. Of course, the question, who would want to kill each of these women, the mystery behind their murders, would torment their loved ones for decades. They've got handprints, they've got footprints. Why are they not finding this person? It was like the talk of the town forever. And for the detectives who were working these cases, frustrating dead ends.

There was also a suspicion, could it have been a member of law enforcement? Right, there was no forced entry, so our speculation was that it was somebody that she knew or somebody that presented a position of authority that could have garnered that trust to get inside the apartment. All of these questions lasted for years and years. Yes. Yes. Both of these brutal murders were cold cases for decades.

And what links both of those cases all of these years later is the cutting-edge forensic technology inside this lab. Tonight, you'll see it unfold right here as they unmask the killer in both cases. It's the first week of December 1988. 19-year-old Kathy Swartz is home with her nine-month-old daughter. In Kathy's living room, a tree decorated, ready for the first Christmas for her little baby.

She was living with Mike Warner. They were, you know, setting up their life, although he wasn't the father of the child. They were a couple and they were trying to make their way. He definitely came in and kind of was her night in shiny armor. They were a happy little family. Mike got up around 5.30 in the morning for his job. He gets home at 3.30, and he immediately notices something's wrong.

Things were in disarray. Blood up the banister, and then in the bedroom was Kathy. Very bloody, unclothed mostly. He would later describe it as like the walls were painted with blood. Mike is so distressed, he immediately runs to a neighboring apartment because he can't bring himself to call the police.

Mike does go back into the apartment to find her daughter. Kathy's baby, who's nine months old, dressed in pants, a shirt, she has one sock on, her diaper looks like it's been recently changed. She was standing up in the crib when Mike walked in. This is that baby left standing alone in that crib all those years ago. She's now 36 years old. How was your mother described to you? Beautiful, happy-go-lucky.

She did love, like, ACDC, Metallica. She was like a little rock and roll girl. And everybody tells me that I was, like, her whole world. So you were 16 years old when you read the police report. Mm-hmm. It was awful for somebody to do what they did to her, knowing I was in the crib right next door. I just couldn't believe that somebody could do that.

So detectives had questioned at the time whether or not this suspect had changed the diaper? Yeah. When the police got there unseen, I was dry. I didn't have a dirty diaper on. And it was some hours I was alone. It was some hours I was alone. So one of the first things that investigators notice is that there doesn't seem to be any sign of forced entry, which again suggests that she knew the person who came in and killed her. She was very good about locking her doors.

I would call her and I would say, hey, I'm going to come over, and I would go to her door. It was locked, and I would knock, and I would say, hey, I'm gonna come over. And I would go to her door. It was locked and I would knock and she would, you know, who is it? And then she would let me in. We theorized that the assault started in the kitchen because in the kitchen there was passive blood drops on the floor.

And then the smearing goes up the stairway to the upstairs bedroom. There are defensive wounds found on her hands. Her throat has been cut in multiple places. She's been strangled. She fought like hell. She was trying to protect her daughter, and she did. And the idea that this happened and you were just a couple of feet away. Yeah. Makes me mad that I wasn't old enough to help her. I'm 100% convinced she was trying to save her baby, because I feel like she would have just ran outside

and yelled, but I was upstairs. And she wasn't going to leave that apartment without me. In the bedroom where Kathy was found is a phone on the bed. The phone cord was cut, but on the phone there was Kathy's fingerprints and then there was also an unknown fingerprint in blood. In 88, obviously, DNA was in its infancy. The fingerprint on the phone, how significant? Very significant because they were in actual blood, and it was not my mom's. There is a bloody footprint in the bathroom.

It looks like the suspect took a shower after the murder to try to maybe wipe the blood off, clean up. But in the process of doing so, he left behind a left footprint, size nine, in blood. And then the person left without being seen and without being discovered. It was very unsettling that something like that could happen. It just didn't make any sense.

None of it made any sense. But when crime scene investigators pass through that gruesome scene again, this time with a new forensic light source, they find a new clue and one that was imperceptible to the naked eye. It was like a great big neon clue. It was like, holy smokes.

South Lanes is a bowling alley in Three Rivers, Michigan. It's the social epicenter of this small town where Kathy Swartz's father ran the pro shop. After her brutal murder back in 1988, it also became a place that connected Kathy's daughter, Courtney, to her mother. I grew up in the bowling alley. I spent a lot of time there.

I was raised by my grandparents. They tried to fill the void as much as they could. What were you told about your mother's absence when you were a little girl? About first grade, they had told me that a bad man had hurt my mom, and she was up in heaven. And when it would thunderstorm, they would tell me that that was my mom up in heaven bowling a strike.

So it was pretty cool watching the thunderstorms as I was little because I'm like, oh, she must be bowling pretty good today. Your mother's best friend, Jennifer, has told you a lot about your mom. Yes, she has. MUSIC Kathy and I were very good friends. I've known her since grade school,

so we've been friends a long time. Kathy was like somebody you could count on. She was a good listener, always there for you, just a, you know, good person. Childhood friends Kathy and Jennifer both found themselves pregnant as teenagers and formed an unbreakable bond. They would talk on the phone several times a day

until December 2nd, when Jennifer couldn't get ahold of her best friend. A police officer came to my apartment and he asked me to go to the station. I remember him asking me questions, you know, do you know anybody that would want to hurt Kathy, along those lines. And I finally just was like, what's going on? Is Kathy okay? And he told me, and I just... I don't even remember.

I know that the first thing out of my mouth was, is Courtney okay? Where is Courtney? I do remember pictures of our first Christmas tree, and she had presents under there for me, but she never got to give them to me. We can see it's the pain to still carry with you. They were a young family just starting out. Kathy and Mike Warner had only been engaged about three weeks before her brutal death and since he was the one who found her body, you know, of course police

would have a lot of questions for him. When the police initially interviewed him, he had this kind of flat affect to his voice. He didn't seem to be all that upset that she was dead. He didn't get emotional and that seemed very suspicious to police. I can't imagine, you know, walking into that scene and what that does to somebody. There was polygraph examinations that were done with. We were able to verify that he was at work in Sturgis all day long and there was no way he could have came back to Three Rivers to do it. I had no doubt in my mind that he didn't have anything to do with us. You know, I knew it in my heart. No, he loved her.

She and Courtney were his world. I go by Judge Jeffrey Middleton now, but at the time of this, I was Chief Assistant Prosecuting Attorney. We would have maybe one homicide a year, not a young woman killed alone in her apartment during broad daylight. At that point, they were leaving no stone unturned. So the police department actually rented the apartment

for a month after the crime, just so that we could return and continue to look for clues and process. This is one of the first cases where they deployed alternative light sources. They went into the crime scene with a black light. On the refrigerator, they noticed two pieces of writing. Metallica was written on the refrigerator,

and Harley was here. These were inexplicable writings that apparently had been erased. And we found that someone had written on her body, probably in magic marker on the inside of her thigh, and said, I was here with an arrow pointing up toward her groin. That was not visible to the naked eye.

And when detectives speak to Kathy's friends, they hear about an ex-boyfriend named Troy Schultes. It turns out he had a nickname, Harley, which, of course, got their attention. He was a huge fan of the band Metallica. In fact, he has a Harley-Davidson decal on his truck. The truck was spotted outside Kathy's apartment that very

afternoon of her murder. Well that's who I told them to look at and you know to question. I know a lot of other people did too. I don't know how to really describe it but it was not a good relay. They were not good together. You know when they further look into him he doesn't have an alibi for that afternoon so he immediately becomes their number one suspect. They pick him up for questioning. Troy Schultes admitted that he was the one that wrote on the refrigerator and on the wall in the apartment.

But he never admitted to writing it on her thigh. And he said, well, I didn't do it. And still with no solid alibi for the night of the murder, police zero in on Troy. I thought that's got to be it. Because again, it's got to be somebody she knew, somebody she trusted. And before long, an arrest in the Kathy Swartz case is announced. But if investigators think they've got their guy, a rude awakening is ahead. rude awakening is ahead.

Kathy Schwartz's daughter, Courtney, the baby left standing in her crib after her mother was brutally murdered, is a mother herself now. Why are you breaking everything? And she and her four children have stayed in Three Rivers, Michigan, finding comfort in a mother that she lost when she was just a baby. I do bring the kids out here for like holidays,

her birthday, but I also do come out here a lot by myself too. Back in 1988, police believe they found the perpetrator who brutally murdered Courtney's mother, the man whose nickname was scrawled across her refrigerator, her ex-boyfriend Troy Schultes. You know, you look at that and you think, well, that's somebody leaving a calling card behind that they were there. Without any kind of solid alibi and now under a cloud of suspicion, Troy is arrested, he's charged, and he pleads not guilty.

We had the fingerprints, but we also had a sample of blood that was left behind. We believe because Kathy fought back, that whoever the killer was had sustained an injury. And Troy's blood type did not match. They take fingerprints and footprints from him, and those prints also do not match. So the charges were dismissed. They take fingerprints and footprints from him, and those prints also do not match.

So the charges were dismissed. As it turns out, he was wrongfully arrested and wrongfully charged. So with the investigation now back at Square One, the Three Rivers Police Department, they refocused on matching the fingerprint and the footprint found at the crime scene to the killer. We had fingerprinted and footprinted so many individuals that had been living in Three Rivers at that time, and none of them were a match.

I thought we would solve this quickly. So the first month passed, we didn't know. Three months passed, a year passed, and it wasn't solved. Police even looked at similar crimes that had taken place elsewhere in the area. They took fingerprints, footprints. There was no match. And the case got colder and colder.

And as DNA technology improves, law enforcement, they continue to work the case. We fast-forward to 2012. We're going over the evidence again. The fingerprint that they had found on the phone was in the suspect's blood, and it was still in viable condition to obtain a DNA profile from that. And we've entered into CODIS.

We think that's going to give us a hit. And of course, it doesn't. As the years continue to pass, the mystery and the collateral damage for this whole community only grew. The town was haunted by this. Did you feel the eyes of the town on you as you were growing up? Yes. And I was the baby, so like everybody wanted to take care of the baby and you know, like, it's still that way. When you don't have answers, you just have questions all the time. But it definitely changed me. It really changed me. I slept with a machete under my mattress for years.

So every December 2nd represents another year without justice for Courtney and her grandparents. Today the family is together remembering Kathy on the anniversary of her death. It's hard. Real hard. I felt a certain point that I wasn't sure that they would ever find out. Probably right there before she died.

It's been 25 years, but remembering hasn't gotten any easier for David Swartz. I think probably the worst thing for me is why. Why? Why did it have to happen like that? When you look at these kinds of cases around the country, there is generally an investigator or a detective who never gives up. Yes. And in this case, it was Jeffrey Middleton. Yes. He is a great guy.

What was it, do you think, that kept him going on this case for so long? He was young just starting out, and this was really the only cold case in our town. I spent more time on this case than any other case in my entire career. Sometimes in later years, I would pretend I was on vacation and lock myself in the library and just go through this file. As Courtney got older, she would call me sometimes and ask if I knew anything, and I never had any answers. Police have DNA, fingerprints, and a lot of physical evidence. What they don't have is the person who murdered a 19-year-old

Three Rivers woman in 1988. Here's a lot of the evidence right from property. Eventually, the Three Rivers Police Department decided to partner with the Michigan State Police. They're convinced that with advances in DNA testing technology, that the Kathy Swartz case can finally be solved. In Kathy's case, we had DNA that was in CODIS and we had not gotten a match. We'd exhausted the fingerprints and these things which normally get us a hit did not.

So I honestly felt like the genetic genealogy was our only chance for solving this case. And then three years ago, Othram, a forensics lab in Texas, now enters the picture. A promising something everyone close to the Kathy Swartz case has waited decades for, answers. Othram uses DNA technology to help identify victims and perpetrators, but law enforcement cannot. They knew that it was an unknown male contributor to that DNA, but they didn't know who it was. All these years later, they said, well, look at this and see if there's something you can

do with it. And you were convinced you could? We were absolutely certain that we could help the Michigan State Police work this case. They said, we'll get you a lead back. We're not going to guarantee that it's the lead, but we'll get you a lead. They had over 1,000 suspects. All of a sudden, it's narrowed down to four. It was our breakthrough. Bill Burr, Drop Dead Years, a Hoolerious stand-up special is coming to Hulu March 14.

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My name is Matthew Murdock. I'm a lawyer. Exactly what kind of a lawyer I am. A really good one. Critics everywhere agree it's the best Marvel television series. Gritty, intense, and elevated. It's Daredevil at his best. If you step out of line, I will be there. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha In 2022, a package containing DNA, that single bloody fingerprint from Kathy Swartz's pink phone arrives right here at this building just north of Houston.

You know, to the outsider, it looks like just another office building, but what's actually happening inside, in these labs, is now changing how investigations across this country are being solved. This is the headquarters of OTHRM, a cutting-edge forensics lab that's been mentioned in some of today's most talked-about criminal investigations. And OTHRM has been credited by law enforcement with helping to solve cases that have been unsolvable for years now. How are you? It's good to see you.

Good to see you. Thank you. Welcome to Othram. David and Kristen Middleman are the husband and wife team behind all of this. Everything you see on our right side will be forensic. Everything you see on the left side will be research. Not every case is suitable for DNA testing right now. Burnt remains, exploded remains, really difficult mixture. But we hope that one day we live in a world where every case can be suitable for DNA testing. So you'll hold on to remains for a while and keep trying. We don't give up ever. The Middleman's partnership, both in work and in life, actually began over a few blind mice.

It's the year 2000. You've just started your PhD at Baylor. You're doing a study on mice. I was. And there was another young scientist. David, yep. So our projects collided. And he actually cured my blind mice. So I thought, wow, if this guy can do that,

I think I'll marry him. David Middleton had worked in biomedical research for years before realizing that law enforcement was relying on a limited form of DNA testing. He knew that better technology was available but said it just wasn't being widely used out there. It sounded like science fiction at the time. This way you could take decades old DNA, put it into a genealogy database, build a family tree for your suspect, and then that takes you right to his door. That was pretty amazing. You start to think, wow, this is really an unused tool here for law enforcement. Yeah, it felt wrong that there were tools available

and yet there was this piling up backlog of cases that were unsolved. So at one point you turn to Kristen and you say, I want to start my own lab. His words were, let's build a forensic lab of the future. And my words were, what? Who's going to give you evidence? You thought from the very beginning, who's going to trust us with this? 100%, I said it.

I don't think people will come. And he said, well, I'm going to build it and we're going to see. Within a year, he was solving cases almost every week. And the more cold cases they closed, the more publicity they got. And police departments around the world started sending them cases. It's just grown exponentially.

In terms of publicly announced solves, Authram is number one in the world. That includes homicides, rapes, unidentified bodies that they've been able to give names to. And Authram's reputation now for cracking these cold cases using DNA evidence and forensic genetic genealogy is what actually led Michigan detectives to send that 30-year-old DNA to this lab. In the Kathy Schwartz case, this DNA was how old when it got here from that ping phone? It was decades old, and in spite of being so old, the DNA was still intact and usable for testing.

So you knew right away this was suitable, and this was just his DNA, the suspects. Yeah, the DNA was a single unknown male contributor. It's a small sample, but in spite of that, there's anywhere from hundreds to thousands of cells worth of DNA. So if you touch David's hand, how much DNA, how many cells have you left there?

Hundreds, hundreds of cells. Hundreds of cells on his hand, and sometimes you're dealing's hand, how much DNA, how many cells have you left there? Hundreds, hundreds of cells. Hundreds of cells on his hand, and sometimes you're dealing with 10, 15. Even less. From years ago. Yeah. And still able to solve the case. It's a very, very sensitive technology. In this Cathy Swartz case, you've chemically labeled all the different parts of the DNA

in this room right here, and what do you do with it from there? It is now ready to actually be read. This particular DNA sequencer is one of the most powerful sequencers on Earth. This here with the green? Yes. Give me a comparison to what authorities used to have to deal with.

What would the DNA sequence reveal versus what you can reveal with the DNA sequencing from this machine now? Sure. So for the last 30 years, people have used a different kind of DNA testing technology that can measure 20 data points in the DNA. This machine actually can read out the entire sequence. So whereas you might get 20 data points in the earlier versions of this technology, this machine could give you anywhere from 100,000 to a million data points.

100,000 to a million? 100,000 to a million data points. So now that to a million? 100,000 to a million data points. So now that you have this sequencing that they just didn't have access to years ago, in this particular case, for example, what do you then do with that? So with the data file that comes out that might have 100,000 to a million DNA markers,

you can do a lot more, including genetic genealogy and that search for distant relatives. You're taking what in many cases is a very old DNA sample from these cold cases. a lot more, including genetic genealogy and that search for distant relatives. You're taking what in many cases is a very old DNA sample from these cold cases. You're expanding the DNA sequence, but you're also able to take that information now and put it up against vast public data now because families and relatives and third cousins and fourth cousins have put all of this information out there. And it would seem that this might unlock cold cases everywhere.

Correct. At that point, Authram's in-house genealogy team takes over to build a family tree for the suspected killer of Kathy Swartz. These types of crimes going unsolved have a ripple effect across society, not just the victim and the family not having answers, but the law enforcement

that worked the case for decades, consumed by a case they can't solve. Finding those investigators and then gaining their trust is what Othram says has been critical to their success in helping to crack these cases. In those early years, you have no background in law enforcement. Are you essentially making cold calls to police stations? I spent my time almost exclusively talking in law enforcement. Are you essentially making cold calls to police stations? I spent my time almost exclusively talking to law enforcement. You live in Texas, and you know if you want to land a case in Texas, you got to get to the Texas Rangers.

But how did you convince them that we've got a tool here? Well, the one that I've done the most work with is a Ranger, Brandon Bess. Brandon Bess is almost out of central casting for a Texas Ranger. He's this imposing man with his white hat. When David Mittelman founded Authrim, nobody had heard of them, and when he best visited in 2019, he was really kind of taken aback.

David walks in this room, and it's to speak to David's confidence in that he's wearing a t-shirt that's about two sizes too small. He's wearing jeans that have holes in them. It looks like he hadn't slept in 14 days. His hair standing up. I have instant respect for him because I can tell this is a guy that doesn't give up.

Baskin-Bouay impressed. He heard about the opportunity to solve a cold case, and he thought, let's team up. And he had one case in mind. They told me it was the most heinous thing that had ever happened that was unsolved in Beaumont. That other case, that young schoolteacher, 31-year-old Catherine Edwards. What was unique about this case? The victim was a schoolteacher, well liked by everyone.

There was no sign of forced entry. So it was a very odd situation. It just didn't add up. This is a crime of violence, a crime of passion, a crime of control. It gives you chills even today. Even today, yes, even today. It was either someone that she knew or someone that presented themselves as an officer. It was almost like whispered in the hallways, it could be one of our own.

So on January 14th, 1995, the Beaumont Police Department gets a 911 call from a man at a townhouse in West Beaumont. 911, what's your emergency? Get me to the police, please. He had found his daughter in the second floor bathroom, slumped over the tub. OK, ma'am, what's going on, ma'am? Her daughter, her daughter has been murdered. OK, what happened, ma'am? We came over here and found her.

She's handcuffed. She's been tortured. Please, we're sending someone. Don't hang up. All right. OK, is there anyone else in the house?'t hang up. All right. OK. Is there anyone else in the house? My husband is here with me.

OK. We found her. That woman was Katherine Edwards, and she's a teacher at a local elementary school. She was supposed to have plans with her sister and family for lunch. When she didn't respond, a phone call, and they went by her house and found that her car was still

there. Got inside the house with a key. Her father said he grabbed her and pulled her over and rolled her over to look and see if there's anything he could do. He was crying hysterically. Police! Police! Police! Police!

Police! Police! Police! Police! Police! Police! Police! Police!

Police! Police! Police! Police! Police! Police! Police! Police!

Police! Police! Police! Police! Police! Police! Dad covers her with a towel. Police show up. There's one officer by the name of Carmen Brown. She shows up first, and she secures the crime scene. And that officer, Carmen Brown Apples, has the memory of her entering Katherine Edwards' townhouse, has played over and over again in her mind for decades. You remember walking in and what you discovered. I remember walking in and going up the stairs,

looking first into the bedroom that was very much in disarray. What did you find as far as the bedroom and the bathroom? Bedroom, there was a look like there had been some type of tussle in there. Things had been knocked around. Sheets were partially torn off. A portion of the bedpost had come off. And then walking into the bathroom and seeing her body on the floor. She'd been handcuffed. That's correct. She had been handcuffed

with her hands behind her back. When her mother said her name, Yes. you thought, I know her. I know her. I went to college with her. We were in sororities together. She was so full of life and so friendly and so nice. That just always stuck with me.

To come to the scene and then suddenly realize it was Mary Katherine, it just knocked me for a minute. It gives you chills even today. Even today, yes, even today. She is not your typical victim by any stretch of the circumstance. It was an extremely unusual case. Catherine and her twin sister, Allison, grew up in Beaumont. They're part of a close-knit Presbyterian family.

They both attended Forest Park High School and then Lamar University, which is in Beaumont. And they both became school teachers at the Beaumont Independent School District. Katherine and her sister were extremely close. When you talk about Mary Katherine and talk about Allison and look at them, I mean, they are identical twins. You can't tell them apart. They both had students come up to each other

in the grocery store thinking they were the other twin. Investigators learned that her sister Allison was likely the last person, they were the other twin. Investigators learned that her sister, Allison, was likely the last person, aside from the killer, obviously, to see Katherine alive. Allison would tell detectives that her twin sister arrived at her house after work to pick up her beloved beagle, Maggie.

She came by, visited with her sister, went home. From what we can tell, she had had a glass of wine and just kind of was relaxing and about to go to bed. And I think the last time she was heard from was about 8 o'clock that night. One of the neighbors told police that he heard someone clomping down the stairs overnight on the night of January 13th.

There was a 12 year old boy and his dad that were staying with some friends that was right next door to Catherine Edwards' townhome. He heard somebody run down the stairs and then a door slam and a little while later a car sped off of loud music. There were some other neighbors that heard some loud banging. It lasted for 60 to 90 seconds.

And they said they never heard a scream, so they just figured that something else might have been going on. They had no idea that there was a murder taking place next door. Crime scene investigators found that there was no sign of forced entry, which is significant, because it either meant that Katherine had kept her door unlocked or had potentially recognized her killer and let him in. Of course, in these cases, it's standard procedure

for investigators to look at those closest to the victim. And really, from the beginning, her ex-boyfriend is seen as a prime suspect. But critical evidence from the scene actually points in a different direction. The crime scene investigators at the time also collected a lot of evidence from the house. And one of those pieces of evidence being the bedspread.

Investigators found semen on Katherine's bedspread and from the rape kit. We've got some DNA here. Now we just got to match it. The DNA actually doesn't match her ex-boyfriend, and he's now cleared in the case. And there are no matches to the DNA in CODIS, which is the National Criminal Offender DNA Database either.

Police were really stumped. They tried every avenue they could think of, but every avenue hit a dead end. One of their initial theories was that the killer had some sort of law enforcement background. The handcuffs were Smith & Wesson. That's a popular brand with law enforcement. They were trying everything they could think of. They really did. They went and tracked down sales of handcuffs in this area, receipts. All members of the Belont Police Department were tested. There were no matches.

It kind of sent a panic through the community, you know, if this can happen to somebody in a really quiet part of town, could it happen to them kind of thing. It went from a rumor to just spreading like wildfire throughout the community. Everybody wanted to know, was this a one-time deal? Was this a serial killer? The case would go cold for decades,

and obviously it's just one of hundreds of thousands of unsolved murders in this country. But then in 2020, two investigators, Ranger Brandon Bess and Beaumont Police Detective Aaron Llewellyn, decided to take a fresh look at the case. At the time, Bess had just been connected with this new lab called Othram, and Detective Llewellyn knows that there's DNA

that's actually available to test in this case. But when Brandon presented Othram to me right then and there, I'm like, let's make this happen. We believe that was gonna be our only hope. The last hope for answers, the DNA evidence from the murder of that elementary school teacher Katherine Edwards is now headed to authoring for testing. Bloody fingerprint left on a phone and a footprint. And in the case of that Michigan mom, Kathy Swartz, what new lead is about to be uncovered

right behind this glass? You'll see right here tonight how both cases are about to crack wide open, sending investigators across this country to find the killers they've been searching for for decades. The person that did it was in the 10,000 pages of police reports. You have all these puzzle pieces, but if they don't all fit together, you don't see the picture. I want you to think about the next words

that come out of your mouth. I want you to think very hard about that. We felt like we had a home run right then and there. And they said he was like a godly man down there. I was like, wow, we're gonna get some answers. Tonight, two horrible murders. I just, just fell off. And now a survivor who lived to tell. I was just like, I can't tell me.

I'll never tell anybody what happened. What did your daughter do? She's been murdered! It gives you chills even today. Even today. If someone had written on her body, on the inside of her thigh, and said, I was here. But only one way to solve that after years of going cold.

I honestly felt that genetic genealogy was our only chance. All these years later, they said, well, look at this and see if there's something you can do with it. It's his fingerprint. It's his bare, bloody footprint. And it's his DNA. It turned into a massacre. The floor goes out from under you.

It was, I'm like, no way. This cannot be happening. He said, your sister's dead. Your sister's dead. There's two people that know that story. You're one of them, and she's the other. And she can't talk. Without the DNA, the story doesn't matter.

That the two of them were able to go back and look at that evidence. Yes. From when you were a nine-month-old baby in the crib just a few feet from your mother. And there was a moment like, oh, this is our guy. For some families, you are the last hope. Courtney Swartz's childhood was clouded in mystery. She was the sole survivor.

She was just a baby at the time during a vicious attack that left her 19-year-old mother, Kathy Swartz, strangled and stabbed to death right near her. Among the clues left behind at the scene, a single bloody fingerprint on Kathy's pink phone. It contained DNA of the possible killer. But of course, the question for decades, who was the killer? For years, you were haunted by that question. Yeah, growing up, most kids, you know, they look at people and they don't have to think,

is that the man that killed your mom? And I've, everybody that I met, that's the first thing that would pop into my mind. This is the original file from 1988. When you have your files in Sokol case, the killer's name, it's in there somewhere. The profilers really believed that whoever it was would return and return to her gravesite. And for years, that was part of our initial office, a rookie training program was,

this is Kathy Schwartz's gravesite. If you see somebody at that gravesite, you need to stop and identify them because they could be a prime suspect in the murder. More than a thousand miles from Three Rivers, Michigan, we're right here on the Natchez River in Beaumont, Texas, where another family heartbroken for decades, the community wondering, do they too have a killer in their midst after the brutal murder of a young elementary school teacher, Katherine Edwards?

She was just 31. And detectives here wondering, would they ever have the tools to solve this case? You know that every day that you don't solve that crime is a day that you're not going to be able to bring that perpetrator justice. This certainly is a scene that has always stayed with me. And you retired and when you left the force at that point it had not been solved. That's correct. Every now and then someone would dust off the the case file and and start looking at it with fresh eyes and I always thought maybe this time something will spark and we'll catch whoever did this. It would turn out that spark,

the one that would finally reignite the whole investigation into the murder of Catherine Edwards, was actually coming, thanks to a major leap forward in forensic technology. In 2020, a courier drops off a package at Authrim's office. And inside are a sample of the bedspread from Katherine Edwards' apartment, a vial of DNA taken from the posthumous rate kit. Author and technicians take a look and they build a genetic profile of their suspect. Investigators now have a human profile that can actually be searched in public databases

to try to find possible family members across this country. And to do that, you need a genealogist to connect the dots. And Beaumont detective Aaron Llewellyn didn't have to look far for help. Aaron Llewellyn knew one who would work the case for free and that was his wife Tina. I remember sitting at the table one night and getting really frustrated trying to map all this out. She's like let me help. Actually just move over I got this. Tina doesn't ask. Tina Llewellyn was a detective in the Beaumont Auto Crimes Division.

And she had an amateur interest in genealogy. I remember dozing off one night. And I wake up, and she's got lines going here and lines going here. So now, along with the middlemen from the Offram Forensic Laboratory, you've got two husband-wife teams actually working the case of this elementary school teacher, Katherine Edwards. And soon, another critical partner joins the hunt.

When Tina Llewellyn is looking through the matches to their suspect, these are distant relatives of the suspected killer, she notices that a lot of them are clustered in Cajun country in Louisiana. And the same contact name keeps popping up. This woman named Sheryl LaPointe. I was sitting at my desk one day and I got a phone call. He said, I'm Detective Erin Llewellyn from the Beaumont Police Department. Your email is attached to one of the matches that we have to the person of interest.

Cheryl LaPointe just happens to be a professional genealogist with experience working in criminal cases. She also has Cajun ancestry. Cajuns, back to the late 1700s, we were a small population who came to South Louisiana. And so they married their neighbors who was usually their relatives also. Cajun ancestry is notoriously complicated and complex to perform genealogical work on. I knew it was gonna be a challenge from the start. We spent hours and hours and hours

on the phone talking to each other. Probably no less than five times a day. A friendship quickly forms as the two women spend the next three months building a family tree around the suspect's DNA, using every record they can find, a combination of internet research and good old-fashioned library archives. A lot of newspaper articles. A lot of newspaper articles. Obituaries. Census records. I remember I got to a couple in Beaumont and there are yearbook

records of two sons that that couple had. And the first one we came across he was the right age. He went to the same high school with our victim. Aaron goes and does research and finds out that he had a criminal history from here and it was a prior sexual assault that occurred in 1981. And there was a moment like this is our guy. And the details of that assault set off alarm bells for detectives. There were a lot of similarities in that case that mimicked Katherine Edwards case. The victim's hands were bound behind her back. She was sexually assaulted. We felt like we had a home run right then and there. Suddenly they realized that this suspect had a second victim. The difference this

time the victim survived and lived to tell. He started telling me that he was training to become a policeman and stuff. He was like, I'll just take you home. I don't know why, but I believed him. So all these years later, investigators in the Catherine Edwards case, the school teacher who was brutally murdered, now think there might have been a second victim of the suspect who is still alive. Paula Bledsoe Ramsey. I was 19. There was a new country western bar that opened up.

I really didn't want to go that night, but I'd promised the other girls that I would go. I decided I wanted to leave. I was done. I wanted to get home. The parking lot was mud, and my car was stuck in the mud. I just thought, I'll just walk to the gas station and call my mom.

She says a man offered her a ride home. He said his brother's name, and then he said, where He said his brother's name and then he said where he went to high school and then he said, do you go to Forest Park? And I was like, yeah. And then he started telling me that he was training to become a policeman and stuff. So then he was like, I'll just take you home. And I don't know why, but you know, I just, I believed him. She realized very quickly that that man wasn't driving in the direction of her home.

He started off being very nice. The thing I know, we're at this field. And then his home, Demir, changed. He drove her to a nearby park, threatened her with a knife, tied her hands behind her back, and raped her in the back seat of the car. Then he dropped her off at her house. I just felt awful and shameful and I was just like I can't tell me I'll never tell anybody what happened. I don't know I was kind of like I don't know if anybody would believe me you know is it my fault was it my fault.

you know, is it my fault, was it my fault? Paula said she summoned the courage about a week later to tell police what had happened. They would soon tell her that they identified the man who attacked her, and it turns out he wasn't a police trainee. He was a 21-year-old salesman in Beaumont. He said, yeah, I did it. I just got carried away. She said that the prosecutor talked to her, said, you know, this is his first offense. We want to plead him to an aggravated assault. She didn't understand what that meant other than he was pleading to a felony and for assaulting her.

And so she agreed to the plea bargain agreement. I think today they take it more serious than they did back then. I wanted him to be punished. I think I was just pushing everything down and just trying to focus on with life. How are you doing? How are you? Ranger Bess? Brandon. Yes, sir. Pleasure. So when you looked at what had happened in 1981 with this sexual assault, you thought,

there's a lot here that seems awfully close to the Catherine Edwards case. I didn't. It turns out that the man who pleaded guilty in that 1981 case is a man by the name of Clayton Foreman. Now, this is the same name that turned up in Tina and Chera's genealogy hunt. He was one of two brothers from the family tree that they actually put together. And you might be wondering why his name never surfaced before. You have to remember that this case was back in 1981,

and DNA collection wasn't even a thing by law enforcement. It was still a decade away. This is how he eluded detectives at the time. He essentially got away scot-free. As investigators get closer to solving this mystery, they begin to learn more about Clayton Foreman's background. And in a twist in this case, one of the things they learned is that Clayton Foreman, the suspect,

actually went to the same school as Katherine Edwards, the woman who was killed. In fact, they probably walked down the same hallways here at school. And there was something else. Katherine Edwards was actually friends with the suspect's first wife. In fact, Katherine Edwards was a bridesmaid at their wedding.

Investigators figure out that Clayton Foreman is working in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and he's working as a rideshare driver. We've got a suspect. Now we've got to make sure that's the right guy. So they go, they pull the trash can. They get some plastic silverware from takeout and some other things from the trash can.

So you tell the FBI what you found, and they gather some trash at the suspect's home in Ohio? Correct. They shipped that down here to me, and then once I went through it, I coordinated with our lab here in Texas to see what items will be best to test and they compared it to the evidence that we had. And we got the call. This is

our guy. This is a this is a match. Of course we're chomping at the bit to get there to Ohio. So you'd been told that one of his u Uber customers had had something taken and that he needed to come down. Maybe you guys could ask him a few questions about it. That's not what you were going to ask him. No, no, not at all. What we're, what we're here about is we're cold case investigators.

You want that shock and awe factor. You want him to walk in the room, you want him to see a guy with a cowboy hat on and he knows that this is not someone from Ohio. We're asking you to visit with us about a crime that we're investigating, okay? You don't have to talk to us at all. He thought we were there just following up on an old case, like hey these guys, they don't have anything, they're just asking me all these questions in case they do one day. I don't think he had any idea that we had his DNA. So the crime that we're looking at is the murder of Mary Katherine Edwards. She was murdered in 1995. She and her sister, Allison, were actually in your wedding.

Right. In 1982. Were you aware of the crime even? No. You didn't know that Katherine Edwards was murdered? No, sir. Did not. Wedding night only would have been the only time you'd seen her? Probably should have. Okay. Never, obviously, had sex with her? No. Never? Never.

Did you ever go in her house at all? Any house that she ever lived in? No. Clay, I'm on level with you. Okay. Right here and now. I want you to hear me real close. All right, sir. What I'm gonna tell you right now is your DNA was on Catherine's bed and was inside

Catherine. Okay. I mean, I don't know how it got there but, if you say it was there. There's only one way for it to get there. Okay. And that's by you putting it there. Okay. There's two people that know that story.

You're one of them and she's the other. And she can't talk. What I ask you is, now, to be honest with us completely, and tell us how did that happen? I'm not going to say anything. It's if I need an attorney now, I see. You probably need one, or you do need one. I don't need an attorney.

After he makes it outside, you know, that's when we execute the arrest warrant and arrested him. You showed up with the handcuffs that he used on Catherine Edwards. We did and got to put him on him after we got through interviewing him. Did he know that those were the handcuffs he used? He was told.

New developments tonight on the murder of a beloved Boma teacher. So finally, 36 years after Catherine Edwards' murder and arrest, the team can now return to Texas to prepare for trial. And in South Carolina, another team of investigators, they're now chasing a promising lead in their case because of this new technology, the murder of investigators, they're now chasing a promising lead in their case because of this new technology.

The murder of Michigan mom, Kathy Swartz, whose daughter has gone so many years without answers. At what point did hope return for you? I got a phone call from Sam Smolcombe, and he said, we may have the guy that killed your mom. Let's go, guys. How can we help you? Investigators working the cold case murder of Kathy Swartz, the young Michigan mother who was murdered,

her baby right nearby, they had sent off the perpetrator's DNA taken from her pink phone to that lab in Texas, Othram. So after three decades with no arrests in this case, Othram actually uses their cutting edge technology to build a comprehensive DNA sequence of who the perpetrator is. So now that you have this sequencing

that they just didn't have access to years ago, what do you then do with that? We could use that profile to search a database of people. And in doing this, we can then begin to figure out how these people that are near relatives are arranged on a family tree. And if we can do that, then we can begin to ask where the person that we're looking to identify

might fit on the tree. In going down the family tree, you find that there is actually a family that lives in Three Rivers, Michigan, a mother and father with four sons. That's correct. We got the report back and they believed it was a family that had lived in Three Rivers. The DNA was male, so this narrowed it down to four brothers. The youngest brother, Barry, and then there was the oldest was Sonny Waters,

then John Waters, and then Robert Waters. We were very excited because now we have leads to run off from. We were very quickly be able to eliminate Barry because his DNA that was in CODIS. And they're able to rule him out, so they take him right off the list. to eliminate Barry because his DNA that was in CODIS. And they're able to rule him out, so they take him right off the list. Detectives then track down two more of the Waters brothers, who both quickly agree to turn over their DNA. One, two, three, four. And with that DNA, they're able to eliminate them as well,

which just left Robert Waters. Robert Waters was married, had a couple of children, and had been living in Beaufort, South Carolina for quite some time. He was a local business owner and had a plumbing business. And from what detectives can tell from looking at his wife's Facebook page, Robert Waters appears to be a happily married family man. Alright.

Knock, knock, knock. Hey, how you doing? Good morning. Good morning, how you doing? Good, how are you? How can we help you? I'm Sam Smulcombe from Three Rivers PD. This is Todd Peters from Michigan State Police. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. Can we talk for just a couple minutes? Sure. Not inconvenient so much. Alright. from Michigan State Police. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. Can we talk for just a couple minutes? Sure. Nothing convenience.

All right. Sure. You seem like the guy next door that would mow your lawn for you if you were gonna be out of town for a week. So I'm helping Sam, and we reopened this case from three years, way back in the day,

going back through and getting interviews and just clearing everything up. So we were wondering if you would have time to come down to the T.V. and talk with us down there. Yeah, okay. If somebody comes in to your door and knocks on your door, investigators from another state and asks you to come down to the department and talk, you're probably going to ask why. Never asks why and agrees to drive himself down and meet us there.

So we'll just expect you in a couple minutes and we'll meet you down there. That's fine. All right. Thank you, sir. After initially not showing at the police station, detectives call Waters. He's informed that they have a warrant for his prints and his DNA. And later that day, he actually comes in. But what I'm trying to do is do the three and the nine.

We had to just focus on getting the fingerprints and the DNA. Yeah, don't have a seat. And one of the issues we had run into is the Beaufort Police Department did not have the fingerprint live scan machine. So we had to use the traditional ink and paper. Hang on for just a second, I gotta take a call real quick here. Yes sir. Hey, sir, we're struggling with this print here. Unfortunately at that police station, they're having trouble actually getting a clean print from Waters. You wanna come get your fingers dirty again?

We're gonna try to do it on just card stock. So we rolled them a second time, sent those back. Never gets upset about it, never gets worked up about the time. We're gonna go flat down. He still just willingly, I guess, hung out with us. So you've got the detectives now waiting for a definitive answer from the lab in Michigan. So they spend the next five hours actually making small talk with Robert Waters. Yeah. If you like seafood.

Yep, I do. You will like that place. We talked about our families, his family, plumbing and remodeling houses. You would never guess by looking at that guy that he was concerned about why he was there or the outcome of it. All right.

OK. I wanted to tell you, we did submit the print that we did premiere earlier. It did match to the one in the crime scene. So at this time, you are under arrest for the murder of Kazzie Schwartz. Okay? Okay. It really surprised me. He did not really react.

I feel like he knew when we showed up that morning that the game was up. Do you remember when you learned that the Prince were a match? There was just so many emotions and everything going on that I was just overwhelmed and so excited because finally they had him. So after decades you have your answer. Yes. 53 year old Robert Waters, a former Three Rivers resident, now a plumber, husband, father, and accused killer. I didn't recognize his name, didn't sound familiar to me at all. But investigators always believe that Kathy Schwartz must have known her killer in some way. You'll remember there was no forced entry.

And they finally discover the connection when they go back to speak to Kathy's one-time fiance, Mike Warner. Well, let me ask you the obvious question. What about Rob Waters? He came there one time. He came there one time. One time.

OK. Do you remember, like, was that close to December or that was... I think so. He knew Robbie Waters had visited the apartment about a month before the murder. We hadn't seen him since grade school. Yeah. Okay, so he just somehow figured out that you guys were living at Riverside. So that...

And showed up that one time. Yeah. I honestly think she knew him then, obviously, because he was friends with Mike, and he was in town and tried to come see my mom and she wasn't having it. He's waiting to be extradited to St. Joseph County. It really was, you know, like, wow, we're going to get some answers. We're going to find

some things out. But before his day in court could actually come, the suspect Robert Waters did something that shocks everyone. No way, this cannot be happening. A major breakthrough in a cold case murder out of three rivers. And investigators say they have finally arrested a suspect. His name is 53-year-old Robert Waters. Those too tight? No. The plans were already in place. He had waived extradition, so he knew that he was going to be brought back to Michigan.

They go down to South Carolina and they discover that this man had been living a full life. Yeah. Married, children, a job. A good job, a good life and they said he was like a godly man down there. To that you say? No. They don't know the real man. But after evading law enforcement for decades Robert Waters never makes it back to Michigan. At like 6.30 in the morning, I received a call from an investigator from Beaufort, and she had explained that she had just come from the jail and that Robert Waters had hung himself in his cell. and that Robert Waters had hung himself in his cell. I'm like, no way, this cannot be happening. Again, like a disbelief, you know, like why, how could this happen?

He had some material that they'd given him in the jail, and it was some devotionals, and the parts that he had ripped out talked about forgiveness and asking for forgiveness. To me it says that you're guilty. I mean, no one is gonna do that in that situation if they're innocent. You feel robbed that you did not get the opportunity to see him face to face.

Yes. I just wanted him to feel my presence in the room. What would you have said to him in court? I don't think I would have said anything. I just think I would have walked in, and my presence is enough words for him. He would have seen that baby. Yeah.

That he left there in that crib all the time. And probably my mom, because I look like her, they say. He's a coward. To take her away from all of us in the manner that he did, and then he got to go live his life, you're not going to give us any answers, I mean, he's just a coward. But remember, there are two cases here that have been unlocked by this new technology, and back in Beaumont, Texas, Katherine Edwards' loved ones are determined

to see the suspect in that case, Clayton Foreman, the man charged with murdering her, face a jury. Clayton Foreman goes on trial in March of 2024 in Beaumont. He is charged with capital murder. Clayton Bernard Foreman, have you pleaded the indictment guilty or not guilty? Not guilty. There were family there, there were friends there, there were former students of Katherine's that were there to see that justice was going to be served.

Prosecutors begin by playing that 911 call Katherine's parents made for the jury. Please, please. What's going on? I found my daughter murdered. That 911 tape was very impactful to start the trial off with. That really gets you involved and to know that something horrible happened. You know, Katherine's parents did not live

to see the man accused of killing their daughter arrested, so this is left now to the twin sister Allison to tell jurors about her sister. Are you related to Mary Katherine Edwards? Yes, she was my twin sister. Allison is now 60 years old and she offered really powerful testimony about growing up with Katherine. She just was always very nurturing and loving to people. And if anyone had a problem, they would come to her and she would talk to strangers and make friends with people and compliment people and just was an amazing person. Allison recalls the afternoon where her sister's body was discovered.

Catherine just never showed up to this lunch. So eventually her father, Lum, agreed to go check on her. And my dad answered the phone. And he was frantic. And he said, your sister's dead, your sister's dead. It was just heartbreaking to see. I mean, her twin, identical twin, is what she would have looked like today if she was alive. And there she is up on the stand testifying. And the emotion and the love and the hurt, all of it came out and was so impactful with the jury.

Allison said when Katherine died, she thought her parents died a little bit that day too. It was horrible. They were never the same. But we decided as a family after that happened that we were going to not let what happened kill us too, and that we were gonna live to honor her, and that's what we always did after that. In a heart-crushing moment, Allison shares with the jury how she honored her sister after her death.

Four years later, I had a daughter, and her name is Catherine, Catherine Ann. After my sister, she never got to know her. My oldest was nine months old, and she was her godmother, and she never got to know her either. You can know the case inside out, but until you see somebody testify and see the raw emotion

that's going on, that was raw emotion that they relived on the stand. Excuse me, thank you. Prosecution's next witness is about to detail the surprising connection between Catherine Edwards and Clayton Foreman. And you got married to a person by the name of Clayton Foreman? Yes. What she's about to tell the jury about his reaction to Catherine's death. It dumbfounded me.

Jurors in the trial of Clayton Foreman, the man accused of killing that school teacher, Katherine Edwards, are now hearing about this investigation that took nearly 30 years and all of it now culminating with this cutting edge DNA testing done by that Texas lab, Othram. So how do you die? Please have a seat. I was very eager to get to the courtroom. edge DNA testing done by that Texas lab, Othram. I was very eager to get to the courtroom.

I work at Othram. We'll do the testing and it will result in the building of a DNA profile to generate new leads in the investigation. This one thing to solve a case and this another to be able to defend how that work was done, allow it to be interrogated openly and critiqued. We want to see at least 50% of the markers and you can see that in actuality we have looks like 87%. So that's far in excess of what is necessary to produce a workable profile.

Without the DNA, the story doesn't matter. That's that one puzzle piece that puts it all together. So prosecutors want the jurors now to hear from the woman who can actually detail the connection between that school teacher, Catherine Edwards, and Clayton Foreman. She was married to him. My name's Diana Cote. And remember, Catherine Edwards and her twin sister were actually bridesmaids at the wedding. Were they friends of yours in high school?

Yes. She also testified that while she was married to Foreman, she actually discovered something unnerving in his car. You had found a briefcase in the trunk of the defendant's car. Is that correct? That's correct. All right. What was inside the briefcase?

It was a gun, a set of handcuffs, and some horrible pornographic material. OK. Regarding the gun, was there any reason for him to have a gun that you knew of at the time? No reason. I mean... Is there any reason that you knew of that he would have a pair of handcuffs in the back of his truck?

No. Did you ever talk to him about that? No. I didn't know what he would say. I didn't know what he would do. And later, when questioned by the defense, Diana said she never saw the briefcase again. She also recalled an odd conversation that she'd actually had with her ex-husband about Catherine and her twin sister. He had told me that in high school he would see them in the hall and he always thought they were

so cute because they were twins and he felt as though he wanted to make sure he protected them. After 11 years of marriage, Diana and Foreman divorced, but they continue to stay in touch and she tells jurors how two years later in 1995 she actually called her ex-husband after finding out that Catherine had been murdered. Was that very upsetting to you? Yes. When you told him, how did he react? He didn't.

It was very shocking to me. He just, it had like no feeling whatsoever. And just basically was like, oh really? And it dumbfounded me. Excuse me. Thank you. And there was one more witness jurors would hear from, Paula Ramsey, Foreman's victim from 1981. It had been decades since Paula had even heard the name of the man who assaulted her.

It was a Friday and I was at work. My phone rang and it said Beaumont Police. This emotion came over me and I was like, what, is someone messing with me? And on the other end of the line was Detective Llewellyn. He said he's a suspect in a murder, and that's when he started telling me about the DNA. And he said, it is a cold case murder. And I was like, you don't even have to ask, I will go.

I will testify. When you hung up, I just broke down. I mean, you just go back to being that girl again, where that fear and all of it just kind of consumes you again. And so suddenly, all these years later, in a courtroom full of strangers, Paula is telling her story about how she was assaulted by Foreman. Did he do something with your hands? He tied them in the back, behind.

He took your hands, put them behind you, and then security room with an object. Do you believe that object may have been a belt? Yes. Did he threaten to cut your throat if you didn't do what he wanted? Yes. I just kind of blocked out everything else and just focused on the questions.

Did he say something that you found odd concerning what he had just done to you? Yes. What was that? When I was getting out of the car, he said, stop crying. I'm sorry. I hope I didn't hurt you. You have to say these things out loud. And then knowing that he's sitting right over there and just being in the same room, and that was hard.

She relived it on that stand. And it was amazing to watch her, how brave she was to do that. You came here today to tell Ms. Cherry what happened to you 42, 43 years ago, right? Yes. Who did you do that for? For Catherine.

I wanted to see justice done for her. And in the end, Clayton Foreman's defense, they wouldn't call any witnesses, but they did deliver a closing statement. You, ordinary citizens, get to decide whether or not, on the day in question, January 14th of 1995, Clayton admitted the offense of capital murder. He may not like it, but he did back in 81. That doesn't make it a murderer. Doesn't make him that you might not kill somebody.

The case was very one sided and the prosecution had all the witnesses, had all the evidence. There is very little the defense could do. The verdict is in 29 years of waiting came down to seven days of testimony and ultimately 52 minutes of deliberation. I'll tell you that anytime I've had a jury trial, I'm scared to death when they're walking

back in that room. That is the most tense moment ever for me. We the jury find the defendant guilty of the offense of capital murder. It took police nearly 30 years to bring Clayne Foreman to trial for the murder of Katherine Edwards. It took the jury less than an hour to convict him. It was very fast. He was sentenced to life in prison. It was just relief. I was thankful that I did it. Thankful that it did help. It did help putting him away.

It was an extraordinary thing to have closure in that courtroom for that young school teacher. And that other case, the mother who was brutally murdered, her baby just a few feet away. Now, she's about to meet the couple who unlock this case. As we stand here today all these years later it's so peaceful and quiet here. It's hard to imagine what played out behind us. It is. Thankfully the detectives worked very, very hard on this. And never gave up. Never gave up, and they solved it. Detective Lou Allen called me, and he said, Hey, Carmen, you remember how you said you always wanted

that case solved before you retired? Well, I know you've retired, but I think we got him, and he did. I can see the satisfaction on your face. Justice after all these years. After all these years, absolutely. Justice, finally for that elementary school teacher, Katherine Edwards, and in the second case, justice as well for Kathy Schwartz's daughter, Courtney.

Hi Courtney. Hello. So these are the two who help solve the case. Hello Kristen. Kristen. You've been all night. I want you to hug me. I want to hug you. Oh, my God. Just the idea, though, that the two of them were able to go back and look at that evidence and solve it all these years later. I can't even. I don't even have the words.

You don't need words. I'm glad you have answers. Thank you. It's unbelievable just in my career to see when I started in 97 to where we're at today. You have these cases that are literally going nowhere. You give them this DNA sample, and the next thing you know, you know who your suspect is.

You think that there are cases like this all over the country right now just waiting to be solved with this new technology? Absolutely, all over the country and all over the world. But finding every case, I think, would be the goal. Every one. Every sexual assault, every homicide, every one of them. We need to find those cases and we need to get them submitted and worked. And that means answers, finally, for thousands of families. Sure. Absolutely.

There are tens of thousands of little tubes of DNA in crime labs across this country. And all of them have answers. I think we're going to live in a world in this lifetime where there are no unidentified victims, victims that are named voiceless, where perpetrators are caught the first time they commit a crime. For some families, you are the last hope.

Mm-hmm. For many. I don't believe in closure when you've gone through something as horrible as one of these violent crimes, but I do believe that truth allows you to turn the page. Okay! I have been living with this for 36 years and these people, they took their time. They solved this case with DNA so I can close this book and open up my own book with my own kids.

And that's, there's no words for that. Yeah! And we should know that that's, there's no words for that. Yeah! I love you! And we should know that that lab, those DNA decoders, Kristen and David Middlemann, Othram, they recently announced their 455th DNA match, Deborah. They are solving these cases. And how incredible, David. Catherine Edwards' killer, Clayton Foreman,

will be eligible for parole in 30 years. He'll be in his 90s. He's appealing his conviction. That's our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Deborah Roberts. And I'm David Muir from all of us here at 2020 at ABC News. Good night.