20/20 - The Hand in the Window: 'Dana'

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

How did police figure out who "Dana" was? "The Hand in the Window" host John Quiñones sits down with "Start Here" host Brad Mielke to unpack the methods investigators used to discover her identity. To catch new episodes early, follow "The Hand in the Window" for free on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Amazon Music⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Deborah Roberts. I'm here with another weekly episode of our latest series from 2020 and ABC Audio, The Hand in the Window. Remember, you can get new episodes early if you follow The Hand in the Window for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app. Now, here's the episode. Build, play, and display with the 3-1 Megablock's preschool sets. and go race car revamps into a pickup truck and hot rod and the build and enchant unicorn transforms into a puppy and Pegasus. Each easy-to-build set comes with rolling wheels, 26 blocks, and easy-to-read building steps, compatible with other megablock sets for endless big building fun. Shop three-and-one

megablocks at Walmart for ages 3-plus. Hey, I'm Brad Milkey. I'm a reporter at ABC News. I host our daily news podcast. start here. And today, we got a special edition of The Hand in the Window for you. I'm sitting here with our host, John Cignonas, for a really interesting bonus episode. So by now, you've heard the series. You know the chilling story of Sean Great, a serial killer in rural Ohio. Over the course of more than 30 hours of police interviews, Great confessed to the murders of five women. Now, you might remember, Great did not remember the full name of one of these women. He said it was something like Dana. He said he killed her in a county that neighbored

Ashland. We did not have time to include this in our other episodes, but there was a whole investigation to discover who this woman was. Police were following tips from multiple counties. Forensic experts were involved. There was cutting-edge technology. Well, today, we're going to dive into the tale of Dana. John Cignonas, thank you so much for being here. Good to see you. Brad. It's good to be here. I mean, part of what made this whole series so chilling was the idea that someone can be like, oh yeah, you know, I killed this person, I assaulted this person. Like, it's just another chapter in this story. So I would like you to take us back to the fall of 2016 when Sean Great first mentions this unidentified victim. He's in jail after being

arrested for kidnapping, rape, two murders. And Detective Kim Major asked Great if there's anything else he wants to get off his chest. And he says there is. I'm thinking her name's Damon. I totally forget her name after a while. Dana. I think her name is Dana. So chilling to hear. I guess what else came out in this interview? You know, Brad, it's a riveting series about a vicious serial killer in Ohio and a female detective, a woman detective who got him to confess. Detective Kim Major, as you mentioned, spent hours with the killer, Sean Gray, trying to get to the details of who the heck, this woman, Dana, was.

It turns out she was a traveling salesperson, sold magazines door to door, and had gone to his house and had promised to sell, he says, his mother, some magazines, but never delivered them, right? So, Sean Great is very angry and upset. Later, he's at another house, his grandparents' house, and here comes the saleswoman again selling magazines, and he invites her into this house. He invites her in. There's a conversation about magazines, and then he strangles her.

She falls, and then she wakes up again. He panics, and he stabs her. Now, Great winds up dumping her body, and eventually setting it on flames. He set it on fire. This was back in 2006, in Marion County, which is a neighboring county next to this town where other murders had happened, Ashland, Ohio. What did investigators know about this victim? Because he's saying somebody named Dana, I guess, what did they know about her as this starts unfolding? Well, her body was found in 2007 on the side of the road.

No clothing. There was no jewelry on her. Nothing to identify her with. And her remains were partially burned because he had set the body on fire. So it was hard to find out anything about this woman. What they did know was that she was white. and there was somewhere between 5.3 and 5.9, about 15 to 22 years old. But they were never able to identify her. It's not a ton to go on. No, no. This became a cold case.

So what do you do? If you're the police, I guess, you know, what happens after Sean Great says, yes, I'm confessing to this murder of somebody named Dana? What do you do as the cops? Something called digital facial reconstruction. And they did this on the body. After he confessed, he confessed. Sean Grade was shown the reconstruction, and they showed it to him, and they said, is this the woman? And he said, no, it doesn't look like the woman. I don't think it's very accurate at all. Enter this woman, Samantha Molnar. She's a criminal intelligence analyst and forensic artist at the Ohio Criminal Bureau of Investigation. She's brought in, and in this clip, she tells us about her role in the case of Dana. I recall getting a, a call from Marion County, and they had explained to us kind of what was going on in Ashland.

They asked me if I would be interested in doing a facial reconstruction, a clay reconstruction on this set of remains, as another attempt to see if maybe we could get another image that might be more of what Sean remembered. Wait, so let me just get this straight. So I'm used to thinking about, like, composite imagery, right? Where, like, you bring in a sketch artist or something like that. It sounds like this is a similar concept. but you're doing like a 3D model of a person's face?

Exactly. It's fascinating science. Investigators then they realize that they do have Dana's skull, right? So Samantha Mulder takes that skull to a hospital where they do a CT scan on it. And then once we have that CT scan, we can actually 3D print an exact replica of the skull, which was very important in this case because she had been burned and her skull was pretty damaged. So then once we had the exact replica of her skull, I basically start doing the clay reconstruction from there.

Start by building the muscle structure on the face, placing the average tissue depth markers, and then kind of finishing the sculpture from there. So that's so wild that they almost build it from the inside out. This is what the skull would be. Right. And then they add all these things on top of it. I guess, okay, so then they have what they think might be

almost a replica of this woman's face, what do they do next? They start sending the photos around of the new reconstruction to the Sheriff's Department, to the media, and they share the photos on social media also to get the word out to see if anyone recognizes this woman, Dana. And this analyst, Samantha Molnar, also meets with Sean Great himself, right? She goes to where he's being held to show him the new reconstruction, to see if it better matches what he remembered, if it better matches his memory of this woman. And he tells her that, yes, it looked much more like the woman that he remembered. And that whole experience of visiting Great was very unsettling. Oh, my gosh. I don't know how to explain it. Um,

meeting Sean Great was extremely eerie. This was one of the worst cases I had worked so far in my career. And then to meet him and he seemed kind of unalarming, I could understand why maybe women were trusting of him or went with him willingly because he didn't, he didn't look like a monster. Wow. So, I guess does anything come out of this then? Well, now they have more to go on, right? So they follow up on leads, right, about missing people from across the United States, from Canada, even Mexico, even Israel, but the victim still remains unidentified. Investigators had been told by Sean Gray, that the victim was an Ohio resident, so they searched through Ohio record, seeing if there was any missing woman in the state of Ohio

who might match, you know, the details of this case, but they didn't have any luck. Wouldn't give up, though. They wouldn't give up. They decided to try something else. And we're going to get to the next phase of this investigation, of this sort of deep dive into what happened from the victim you didn't necessarily hear about in the rest of the series. So we'll be back right after this. Friday, Avatar Fire and Ash arrives in theaters. I am the fire! Get your 3D tickets now for the greatest chapter of the biggest saga in history. Whatever happens, protect his family.

Stop! Critics rave. It's by far the best Avatar movie. If your father and I do not return, you go as far and as fast as you can. Movies don't get any bigger than this. Avatar Fire and Dash, rated PG-13. Get tickets now.

My name is Percy Jackson. Getting in trouble is like breathing for me. The hit series returns to Disney Plus and Hulu. The danger the camp is under is greater than you can possibly imagine. For the key to our survival, Three of you must quest to the sea of monsters. Let's go do the impossible. I'm not going to let some stupid monsters stand in my way.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, new season now on Disney Plus and Hulu. Ritted TV, PGV. Ella McKay, now playing in theaters. Your father's here. Why? From writer-director James L. Brooks comes the perfect holiday movie to see in theaters. I'm a different person. I have never in my life helped this way about any other way.

Jesus! I wasn't counting your mother! Critics declare it's hilarious, smart, and with Emma Mackey's performance, a star is born. It's complicated when you come from our family. Stop trying to be normal and pick something easy. Ella McKay, ready PG-13. The NBA is happening Christmas Day. Five games, one unforgettable lineup. That's what Christmas is all about.

Buckets for breakfast, breakaways for dessert. It's the high. holiday tradition. Christmas is our day. With star power from across the globe. The stars, they are going to be out. The best gift, you don't even have to unwrap it. We want to say, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

NBA Christmas Day begins at noon Eastern on ABC and ESPN. Now streaming. Go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift. Disney Plus invites you to experience a streaming event for the eras. I wanted to give something to the fans that they didn't expect.

And we're going to do everything in our power to blow your mind. Don't miss the exclusive six-episode docu-series. This is the biggest challenge we've ever done. Tonight, we complete that challenge. The End of Anera. First two episodes now streaming. Only on Disney Plus. Hey, guys, it's Kamel Anjiani.

My new stand-up special Night Thoughts premieres December 19th on Hulu. I promise you're going to laugh. I am an immigrant. I am. Are there any other immigrants here? Okay, what you can't do is point at someone else. Don't miss night thoughts on December 19th. Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers.

Terms apply. That wasn't my call. If it was my call, terms would not apply, but it's not my call. Terms apply. All right, and we are back with John Kignonas, the host of the hand in the window. So, John, I mean, investigators now have this reconstruction of Dana's face, but they're still not having any luck identifying her. So what do they do next?

They just won't give up. Samantha Molnar, the criminal intelligence analyst and forensic artist, comes up with another idea of how to find out who this woman is. She thought of something called isotope testing. The way it was described to me was that you are what you eat. Basically, you're exposed in your environment, right? Everything you eat, the source of the water you drink, all of that shows up in your bones, right? And it can reveal, where you were born, where you grew up, and where you've lived throughout your life. Like there are markers literally that reside in your bones. Yeah, what you've been eating, what your diet. And it can reveal all of this. So the investigators send Danes remains to a lab in Florida to do this isotope testing.

They tested a tooth and they tested a rib. So it's going to tell you maybe geographically where you were born, where you live. where you live the first few years and then your ribs regenerate every 10 years or so and that would have told us maybe where this female had spent

the last several years of her life. And then once we finally got those results back, we found out that she likely was not an Ohio resident but maybe that she was from the southern United States somewhere between Texas and Florida. Wow, so we think she's from between Texas and Florida. How do you figure that out, though? How do the results actually prove like,

oh, this person is from the south and not a different part of it? the country. They test the soil samples and things in particular local environments, and they create this isotope map by region, right, to see what matches with the victim. And the isotopes found in Dana's bones matched isotopes found in the southern United States. It's a huge breakthrough then, right? Because then once you realize this person's not necessarily from Ohio originally, you kind of have to widen your search as to where this person came from. Yeah, that means they start pulling misin-person's cases from states in the southern U.S. down in the

south. Anyone, especially with the name Dana, right, or similar, and in that age group that they had, still no luck they were unable to identify here, but investigators then finally turned to another idea, and that is genetic genealogy. They sent samples of her, Dana's DNA to the big system that's out there, which builds family trees and identifies who our relatives might be. I know I've done it myself. And then finally, there is a break in the case, and it leads to the name Dana Lowry. What we did next was go down and swab the daughter of Dana to be able to confirm her identity. So your mom is going to share 50% of the DNA as her children. So we were able to swab her daughter, make that comparison, and then successfully identify Dana as the victim.

I learned that both of her parents had actually passed away before she had passed away. I also learned that, you know, she was in a relationship, and they had a couple of kids, that she was a mother, and that she had decided to travel selling magazines. and I believe her intent was to come home to her family, and she didn't get to. I think for me, the thing that struck my heartstrings the most was those kids growing up, not knowing, thinking maybe their mom just didn't want to call anymore or didn't want to come back and see them, but that wasn't the case at all. Dana Lowry was identified in 2019.

That's more than a decade after she was murdered, three years. years after Sean Great confessed. By that point, he had already been sentenced to the death penalty for the murders of Elizabeth Griffith and Stacey. In a separate case, he had received life in prison for the murders of Candace Cunningham and Rebecca Lacey. Sean Great pleaded guilty to Dana Lowry's murder and was then sentenced to life in prison in that case, too. So ultimately, he confessed to these five murders all in Ohio over the span of about a decade. And John, last question for you, Because you personally went to the scene of this, you know, this house that had been abandoned where there had been, you know, some of these murders here in Ashland, right? I'm just curious about what it was like when you went to this town all these years later.

What is it like there? What sticks out to somebody like you? It was such a big case and such a tragic case that people still remember, you know, everyone still talks about it. I went to a gas station where one of the victims was picked up because she had had a flat. tire. I went to a wooded area where Sean Great would build tree houses and hide out there and then dumped the body next to a tree. I went to an area out, 10 miles outside of Ashland, where he had killed a woman and then dragged her body to a creek and didn't even bury her. He just covered her with some branches and left her there. And then, of course, I went to those vacant lots

where the women, two of the women's bodies were found, one of them in the closet, and one under a pile of trash. This is the house that has since been torn down. Exactly. And where one of the victims, the La Jane Doe, was held until she was able to call 911. Detective Kim Major has written a book about it all called A Hunger to Kill,

which is once Sean Great said to her that he just felt this hunger to kill. The book, she says, is to remind everyone that this could happen anywhere, and it could have happened to any one of us. She said it could have even happened to me. It's really, again, tragic story, but again, a testament to the persistence of these investigators. Oh, yeah, they're amazing. Yeah, so we could talk about this for hours, but I'm really glad that we got to at least sort of dive deeper on one of these storylines that is just so interesting here.

John Cignonas, thank you so much for a great series and a great chat here. Thank you, Brett. Thank you.