48 Hours - Knock Knock - Encore

Episode Date: June 30, 2019

Can a podcaster and a driven detective using cutting-edge technology solve a stone cold double murder? "48 Hours" correspondent Richard Schlesinger investigates.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. This is Knock Knock, the unsolved murders of Betty Jones and Catherine Crickler. My name is Jason B. Jones. I was 10 years old. The phone rang.

Something was wrong. Very wrong. That call was about my grandmother. She was dead. And not just dead, but murdered. I will never forget that night. Because it was September 3rd, 1990, was the night that I was introduced to evil. It was a very unusual crime for our community and of course a very brutal crime.

It would take me 27 years to finally get up the courage to ask all the questions about that night. I'm kind of freaking out a little bit, I'm not going to lie. that night. I'm kind of freaking out a little bit, not gonna lie. It was important for me to see where it happened as I was documenting this and trying to understand it. It was two girls hanging out, watching TV, getting ready to sleep. Being here I feel like I understand how scary that would have been. With the knock on a door. Betty goes and answers the door. And the guy comes in,

and immediately Catherine starts hearing screaming and knows something's wrong with Betty. And then he attacks Betty. And then he kills her. He immediately went toward Catherine. Raped her. Str kills her. He immediately went toward Catherine, raped her, strangled her, thought he killed her. I could hardly wrap my head around it. The fact that there was somebody that had actually committed a murder

and then to just rape my grandmother so nonchalantly, you know, and just leave her to die. I miss her. What was done in that house was as bad as anything Jack the Ripper ever did. Standing in front of this house today, 28 years later, what's it like for you knowing that you still don't have your man? It's frustrating. There's no doubt about it. I always assumed that Betty and Catherine's case was cold and dormant. What I learned is that Sergeant Lott is no ordinary police officer.

Even though I'm a dinosaur, I'm constantly getting on the Internet and looking at science. Parabon, what they do is they take the DNA and they developed a DNA facial recognition of the killer. We're able to give them a prediction of what that person looked like. So it's essentially a genetic witness. Do you remember the moment when the picture revealed itself on your computer screen? It's like, now I know what you look like. I'm going to get you. Even as a child, I learned what the monsters fear.

Whether imaginary or real, monsters today still fear the light. When we started this podcast, I thought that real answers would be years or decades off. Never in a million years did I think that we would get answers so quickly. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was.

Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with

and the bold risk-takers who brought them to life. Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best-selling video game character of all time, only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye? Or Jack, that the idea for the McDonald's Happy Meal first came from a mom in Guatemala? From Pez dispensers to Levi's 501s to Air Jordans, discover the surprising stories of the most viral products. Plus, we guarantee that after listening, you're going to dominate your next dinner party. So follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to

The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. It's just the best idea yet. Jason Jones has a job he loves. He designs album covers and produces music videos. I think something like this. In Nashville. But for more than a year, he had a second passion. He had a podcast, a dark podcast. I will never forget that night.

And it was personal. I remember waking up in the middle of the night sweating. Jason launched his podcast in September 2017. It had an odd title, Knock Knock. It had an odd title, Knock Knock. It is about a particularly vicious crime that had been unsolved for nearly 30 years. I can't imagine the terror that Betty and Catherine felt when they realized behind that knock knock stood a monster. For Jason, this was more than just a murder tale it's the story of his family Betty Jones was his step-grandmother I think that

there was this this hum of fear throughout our family after Betty died it was Labor Day 1990 Jason was 10 years old and living outside of Houston. That's when his family got that phone call telling them Betty had been murdered in Starkville, Mississippi. Were you scared? Oh, yeah. I knew enough to know that there was someone out there that killed my grandmother, and they may want to kill me too. Jason's parents, Bill and Colleen Jones, struggled to explain it all to him and his younger brother, Simon.

Do you remember the words you used? We don't know why, but God called Betty home, and we'll see her again someday. Betty came into their family late in life. She was a widow when she married Jason's grandfather. He already had two grown children including Bill, Jason's father. She was wonderful. She took us in as her own children, you know, and was just warm and loving and just an angel to me. Sadly, Betty's marriage to Jason's grandfather did not last long. My grandfather passed away from a heart attack just a few years into their marriage.

Although Jason only knew his step-grandmother for a few years when he was young, she left her mark. She was the lady that came over and took us to nice restaurants and smelled really good. That's how I remembered her as a 10-year-old. She was the grandmother that was really into baseball, which, I don't know, for a little boy, having a grandmother that's into baseball is pretty cool. Betty Jones was more than just a baseball fan. She was a team mom for the Mississippi State University Bulldogs in Starkville. Her job was to keep the players from getting homesick and wanting to leave. Betty's sister, Ann McWhorter, says Betty often brought the players chewing gum to keep them from other vices. Now, honey, I want you to be sure and chew that gum. Now, don't you get in that tobacco.

She had a real connection with this baseball team. She did, but she had a connection with any age person. Catherine Krigler was one of the people to whom Betty felt connected. Betty was 65. Catherine was 81, a retired school teacher. She was taking some new medication, and Betty volunteered to keep her company in case she fell ill. What was the basis of their friendship? Church.

Julia Krigler Holt, known as Juki, says her grandmother and Betty were active members of the First Presbyterian Church, which was right next door. Betty was a church elder, Catherine sang in the choir, and she played the piano at home. I think that was her dream for me to be a pianist. That didn't happen, but pianist, that didn't happen, but I took lessons for her. To this day, Juki has warm memories of her grandmother's house. Catherine raised two children there, and it was a gathering spot for extended family. This is me, and there's my granny. Her house was a quaint little house. I never in a million years would ever feel scared in that location. That night in 1990 started out peacefully enough. The two friends were just settling in after suppertime.

But that changed around 9 p.m. They had taken baths. They had their gowns on. They were getting ready to watch the ball game when somebody knocked on the door. The monster came to the door. David Lindley is now retired, but he was the lead investigator at the time.

He says when Betty opened the back door, an intruder forced his way in. As best we can tell, entered into a physical confrontation with her, and she tried to defend herself. Katherine Krigler was all but helpless. She was an amputee and was in her wheelchair in the bathroom when she heard Betty calling for help. She tried to see what was going on and the attacker appeared. He ended up making her go into her bedroom and told her that he did not want to hurt her like he had hurt her friend. He, in fact, did rape Ms. Crickler.

And he left the residence sometime shortly thereafter, we surmise. Catherine was left bleeding. She had fractured ribs and a broken hip. But she somehow managed not only to survive, but to call for help. Ms. Crickler was able to rally her strength. She couldn't get to her wheelchair, so she took a pillow, used it to kind of glide or slide into the kitchen area where there was another phone, and she was able to reach up.

Your name's Ms. Crigler? Yes. There was one single lower young man, reach up. Catherine was rescued by EMS, but in the living room, with the baseball game still playing on the TV, Betty was dead on the floor. Her throat was slashed. She died trying to save Katherine. She was a fighter. And I know that when this guy started attacking her,

Betty fought back like a wild cat. Betty's death left a hole in her family's life, and everyone in the small university town was on edge. As it turns out, the police wouldn't have to look far for a good suspect. There was one right next door to Catherine's house. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal.

There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still avert it. It just happens to all of them. I'm journalist Luke Jones Jones and for almost two years I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn trials I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most

shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informants's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. To look at these pictures, it makes me sad. Even now, it is hard for Juki Kriegler-Holt to think about the details of what happened to her grandmother, Catherine. How horrible it is to know that at the very last part of her life, something so horrible would happen. unless part of her life something so horrible would happen. But Juki is still amazed by the courage and the strength her grandmother summoned after she was attacked to get help for herself and her friend Betty.

It makes me proud of her, because she could have totally just given up right then. Most people would. You know, that's pretty amazing. Sadly, Catherine was unaware at first that Betty was killed clearly what I can remember her saying all the time was you know if anything ever happened to Betty I don't want to live Betty's stepson Bill Bill Jones, visited Katherine in the hospital after she learned her friend was dead. It was an emotional visit. She was upset that she survived and Betty had gone.

Do you remember what she said? She said, I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. Please forgive me. And I said, I forgive you. Did you feel that she was responsible? You know, it tore me up, but that's all I could say or do. And that's what she wanted. So that seemed to help. In November 1990, two months after the attack, Catherine Krigler died of complications from her injuries. There's no doubt that whoever killed Betty that night,

killed your grandmother, just took longer. Yeah, absolutely. But Catherine had lived long enough to give the Starkville police a description of the assailant. She said he was a young man, short hair that was almost cut like a crew cut, spiked, I guess you would say these days. He had blue eyes and light blonde hair or brown hair. Police released this rudimentary sketch. She described his complexion as swarthy, and we imagined that to be something either as a skin tone or a suntan. Investigator David Lindley says the killer left a few clues behind. We collected fingerprint evidence. We collected hair evidence, blood. You found some cigarettes there.

We did. And neither of the women smoked. So we, of course, assumed that the perpetrator left the cigarettes at the scene. But police could not figure out a motive. The killer took $28 from Catherine, but nothing else, and Lindley didn't think a petty thief would commit a crime this violent. But in this particular case, there was just no rhyme or reason for it. This is a crime of violence, purely for the sake of violence. The hunt for a suspect was intense, and police had a lot to work with. Lindley provided an update soon

after the killing back in 1990. Residents of Starkville are extremely helpful in providing leads and right now we have several leads that we are pursuing. Many of those leads, like a report of a drifter spotted in the area, went nowhere. But a good suspect soon emerged. A young neighbor of Catherine Krigler's was having a party at his house the night of the attack, and he had blonde hair and blue eyes, just like the killer Catherine described. Where was the house? The house was just over in this area here.

It's not there anymore. It's not there anymore, but it was about 150 feet away. The more police investigated, the more their suspicion grew. He did leave the party for a period of time, but nobody at the party could recall for exactly how long he was gone from the party. What's more, the young man was known to carry a knife, and he smoked the brand of cigarettes found at the scene. Well, that must have caught your attention. Certainly. The suspect also

reportedly made a cryptic and possibly incriminating statement to a witness when asked about the crime. He stated that he did not do it, but his other self may have done it. Police had a lot of suspicion, but did not think they had hard evidence to arrest him. There was never enough probable cause to make an arrest. I think a lot of people in the community naturally believe that this individual committed this crime. They wanted it resolved quickly. But unfortunately, it didn't occur that way. Police were back at square one. And after three years of dead ends,

investigators turned to America's Most Wanted, which agreed to feature the case. This is America's Most Wanted. And everyone had high hopes. Well, I was hoping that somewhere up in Chicago or California, someone would brag in a bar. You know, I was in Mississippi at that time. And, hey, I did it. I did it.

David Lindley helped man the phones at the show's headquarters in Washington, D.C. We received many, many tips from all over the United States. It looked promising, but only for a while. Anything pan out? They did not. It was unsuccessful. A good attempt, but again, unsuccessful. The level of hope that you must have felt. This case has been a heartbreaker over the years, so disappointing is a good word. In 2004, Lindley, who by then had been promoted to chief of police, handed the case over to an

enthusiastic detective named Bill Lott, and Lott was intrigued by this case. When I first got assigned this case, I didn't do anything for the first year but read it six times. I bet Chief Lindley thought, when is this kid going to start working this case? But as Lott dug in, he became confident that this case could be solved. And I knew at that point I had a critical piece of evidence. Sergeant Bill Lott's roots run deep in Starkville, Mississippi. And he has struggled for years to solve the mystery that has hung over his town since Labor Day of 1990. To think that somebody would do something as heinous as this to elderly people just, it made me angry. Lott feels a personal connection to Betty Jones and Catherine Krigler.

Because my parents had divorced at an early age, and aunts and uncles had helped raise me, and they were older, and I had an older aunt that, you know, played a role in my life. It just didn't sit well with me. When Locke took over the investigation in 2004, he inherited boxes of evidence, hundreds of pages of police reports, and a decade and a half of frustration. But let me tell you something.

There was a lot of great, great detective work done. The only advantage I had over those guys was DNA. That's because when the crime was committed in 1990, not much was known about forensic DNA. But with new knowledge and new technology, Lott knew he had potentially critical evidence because doctors had extracted DNA from Katherine Kriegler using a sexual assault kit. They may not have known it at the time, but that was a key moment in this case. There's no question about it. That is the key to the gate. There's no question about it.

That is the key to the gate. Police kept the evidence, and in 2005, Lott sent it to a lab. What did that lab do for you with this evidence? They got a semen-based DNA profile. With the DNA profile of the killer in hand, Lott's first order of business involved an old suspect, that blond-haired, blue-eyed man who was partying next door to Katherine's house. What is this?

This contains the original kit of the number one suspect that supposedly did this crime. Lott had the killer's DNA profile compared to the DNA of the young man, who many in Starkville still believed had been responsible. What did it show? Not a match. Not a match. Right.

The one-time prime suspect was almost certainly not the man who killed Betty Jones and Catherine Krigler. But in 1990, there was a lot of pressure to arrest that man. And Lott believes if he had been arrested, he would have been convicted and executed. Has this case changed the way you feel about the death penalty? I'll say it this way. I used to be 100% pro-death penalty. Now? Now, I think it would have to be on a case-by-case basis. Sounds like a shift to me.

Yes, because he could have been put to death for a crime he didn't commit. Lott went on to test the DNA of 60 other potential suspects. None was a match. There was also no match in CODIS, the National DNA Database of Violent Criminals. I had resolved that it would probably never be solved. Betty Jones' sister, Ann McWhorter. That I would go to my grave without knowing who did this. Hours away in Tennessee, Jason Jones and his family, who had grown distant from Betty's over time, knew little about the investigation.

Because no one was calling us. We were the extended family. Because no one was calling us. We were the extended family. And Jason says over the years, his family hardly ever spoke about Betty's death. It becomes this taboo subject where people don't really disclose information because it's hard to talk about. But now, as an adult, Jason was more curious than ever. I wanted to know what had happened. And so I Googled it and nothing came up. It was shocking to me that I couldn't find information about this case or my grandmother's murder or her life or anything.

He had questions about Betty, but he had even more about Katherine Krigler. I don't think I knew the name Krigler, to be honest. You didn't know the name of the other person? Yeah. I don't think I knew the name Krigler, to be honest. You didn't know the name of the other person? Yeah, I don't think so. But in August 2005, when Jason was getting married, there was a huge, almost unbelievable development. His fiancée's mother held a bridal shower and invited some of her friends. Stories frequently come out of bridal showers, but not like this story. I was busy playing mother of the groom, and so I was introduced to a lot of people that day. Jason's mother Colleen was chatting with a young art teacher when they discovered that even though

they were both in Nashville, they had a Mississippi connection. I told her that I had married a guy that had gone to high school and college in Starkville. And she said, Starkville? My grandparents lived there. What's your husband's last name? What were your in-laws' last name? And as soon as I said Betty Jones, it was just like she had seen a ghost. And I was it. Standing before Colleen Jones was Katherine Krigler's granddaughter, Juki. Well, how did you feel? Just a wow.

You know, like, what are the chances? You tell me. What are the chances? Yeah, one in a billion, you know? It's amazing. Both women were quick to see a larger meaning to the chance meeting. This cannot be coincidental, happenstance. It's like the angels went, oh. But it wasn't until 2017 that Jason, who was inspired by true crime podcasts,

that Jason, who was inspired by true crime podcasts, decided that he should spotlight this cold case. Monsters today still fear the light. The podcast was not only a way for me to learn more about the life of a grandmother that was taken from me too early, but also a way to try to seek justice or to make sense of what happened. a way to try to seek justice or to make sense of what happened. Working on the podcast would force Jason to return to the place he last saw when he was 10 years old, Starkville, Mississippi. It's always been a story, and on this trip, it's just progressively became more real. But it's always been real to Sergeant Lott, who has never given up

and believes one of Starkville's oldest cases will be solved with the newest technology. I want to get this guy. And this is a good tool. This is as good a tool as we've had in a while. In early 2017, Jason Jones traveled to Starkville, Mississippi. It's a place he had long associated with only death and sadness. This just feels like Pleasantville, USA. But visiting the home where his step-grandmother spent the last moments of her life

brought back those familiar dark feelings. I just feel overwhelmed here. It's not even sadness. It's just, there's just a magnitude. There's a, I don't know. It's hard to describe. I hadn't visually put together that this was a real place with real walls and real windows.

Now that I'm here, I can really understand what it would be like, that sense of being trapped and that overwhelming panic. Being in this place, knowing what happened here, made it even more important to Jason to find out who was responsible and to share the search with his listeners. How is it that we could have untampered DNA evidence, yet no matches had been made? If we couldn't find a match, honestly, could this case ever be solved? But Sergeant Bill Lott was still working this case, often on his own time. I told my wife, I said, if I retire and I still haven't solved this case, you're going to be rolling me up to the police station in a wheelchair. I'm not quitting. And DNA technology is improving quickly. In June, Lott had the suspect's DNA profile sent to Parabon Nano Labs in Reston, Virginia. Parabon works with cutting-edge

technology performing what is called DNA phenotyping. DNA phenotyping means predicting a person's appearance from DNA. Dr. Ellen Greytak is Parabon's lead scientist for DNA phenotyping. Gray-Tac is Parabon's lead scientist for DNA phenotyping. How new is this technology? It's very new. It's been available to law enforcement for less than four years. And at the beginning, there was a lot of skepticism. DNA was seen as having this one purpose for matching. And we're saying, no, there's all this other information you can get from DNA. That's because DNA is like a blueprint for a person's ancestry and physical characteristics. There are DNA codes that tell the color of your eyes, your hair, and your skin. The codes also tell your face shape and even if you have freckles and how many. And we've trained our

computers to recognize those genetic signatures. And then if we run a crime scene sample from an unknown person through that model, and the computer recognizes one of those signatures, it can say, there's a high probability that this came from someone with blue eyes. And then as you add each trait, you end up with a smaller and smaller group of people. If I'm a cop looking for a needle in a haystack, it seems to me you've just taken away a lot of hay. Absolutely. It is extraordinarily helpful with eliminating a lot of suspects and focusing an investigation. Parabon showed us how they came up with the composite in the Starkville case. We've got the predicted face shape, we've got

the predicted skin color on there, but we don't have the predicted eye color, predicted hair color. But this process is part science and part art. This is sort of a blank canvas. Exactly. To use an artistic analogy. Tom Shaw is a forensic artist who interprets the computer's conclusions and makes the image more lifelike. The computer had concluded that this killer would most likely have some freckles, brown hair, and light blue eyes. And so then I can go to that collection of light blue eyes and pick out, okay, this is the one we like. We're not producing a photograph of that person.

We don't know the person's age, their weight, anything that they've done with their hair or tattoos, scars, things like that. But we can give a description, which is something that these detectives didn't have before. In late August 2018, just a few days shy of the 28th anniversary of the Labor Day murders, Parabon sent Sergeant Lott two composites. One showed an idea of what the suspect looked like back in 1990. That's him at the time of the murder.

And a second one showed what he might look like now. When you look at this picture, what goes through your mind? Where are you? Now how am I going to find you? But other experts at Parabon were using another method to find the suspect. Genetic genealogy. In genetic genealogy, we're uploading it to GEDmatch, which is a public database of people who have explicitly chosen to publicly share their DNA for other people to search and have explicitly consented to law enforcement usage.

There are roughly one million people on GEDmatch.com, all searching for family members. The DNA of the Starkville killer was compared to the DNA of all those people to see if one of them might be at least a distant relative. And they found something. In this case, we were able to find some good matches. These are people who genetically match our unknown subject, and we're trying to figure out, based on knowing approximately how much DNA is shared, can we build their family trees and figure out who this unknown person is? Genetic genealogy helped police catch the alleged Golden State Killer,

who's believed to have murdered 13 people and raped 50 women across California in the 70s and 80s. So Lott hopes it can help him, too. I've been obsessed with it, looking at it to see if I've got the genetic genealogy yet. The Jones and Krigler family's sensed investigators were on the verge of something big. And I've just felt an electricity about, you know, that this is going to be solved sooner than later. And they were right. An arrest made in Starkville in the 1990s.

They may have the man responsible. I was asleep here at home, and about 4 AM, I received a text from Sergeant Bill Lott. He said, we've got him. I wasn't very eloquent. I believe my exact quote was, you're shitting me. Over the course of this season, we've unpacked Betty and Catherine's life. This past summer, as Jason Jones was completing his podcast series,

we've seen setbacks and huge opportunities for moving this case forward. He was hoping, among other things, that a listener would come forward with information about the murder. A listener did come forward, but with a completely unexpected story. but with a completely unexpected story. We got a message from a girl by the name of Betty Hong. Her story was hard to believe, honestly. What was it? Betty emailed us and let us know that she was actually named for my grandmother.

Betty Hong told Jason that in the 80s, her family, having escaped the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, were sponsored by Betty Jones and several other members of the First Presbyterian Church to come live in Starkville. Betty's mother, Kim Hong, says her family came to the U.S. with their freedom, but very little else. Back then, I come, I don't have nothing. I only have two bags. You came with just two bags? Two small bags, yeah. It was before Betty Hong was born, but she says Betty Jones took care of her family and helped them get settled in America.

took care of her family and helped them get settled in America. She truly impacted my parents' lives directly by clothing them, bringing them out to eat, and did it out of love. And we got to come to America and have this American dream. So it's really Betty Jones, like one of those angels that lived upon us. But now that she's passed, I feel like she's someone who watches over me. What is the emotion you're feeling now? It's this burst of just thankfulness.

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. This past summer, 48 Hours brought Jason and Betty Hong together for the first time. We're like family. We're totally family, yeah. The Hong story became part of the seventh and last episode of the podcast that aired in August 2018. My name is Jason B. Jones. But although the podcast had its finale, it had no finality.

Because still, no one knew who killed Betty and Catherine. What I would hope is that if we did a season two of Knock Knock, that it would be about the conviction and the trial of the person who killed Betty and Catherine. And just weeks after that interview with Jason, it began to look like the story would have the ending he wanted after all, because finally, Sergeant Bill Lott had a suspect. What was it that led you to this guy? Genetic genealogy. Lott's faith in science paid off. A genetic genealogist at Parabon

had completed weeks of detailed work building family trees based on those DNA matches on GEDmatch.com. And she gave Lott a name. It seemed surreal. It seemed like I was dreaming. It wasn't a dream. It seemed surreal. It didn't, it seemed like I was dreaming. It wasn't a dream. It was real. This was Lott's suspect, 51-year-old Michael Wayne Devon. Devon is a twice-divorced

father of three. He'd worked in construction and farming most of his life, and he was being held in jail a few hours away on drug charges. Why wasn't his DNA in the national database? He had no prior criminal history until recently. He's never served time or anything like that. No, he's not. Lott believed Devon had features similar to the ones depicted in the Parabon composite,

but he needed to make sure he had the right man. So he sent a cigarette butt that Devon discarded while in custody on the drug charges to a lab for DNA testing. The result? The DNA on the cigarette was a match to the DNA taken from Catherine Krigler the night of the attack. You went up and got him that day, that Saturday? Oh, yeah. It was time. It was time.

It was time. On October 6th, 2018, 28 years after the crime, Betty and Katherine's suspected attacker was brought in shackles to Starkville, Mississippi. Do you have anything to say at all to their families or about your arrest? Michael Devon was charged with Betty Jones' murder and the rape and sexual battery of Catherine Krigler. It's been a long, long journey, but I would do it all over again. And later that day, Lott visited the man who had worked the case first. Good to see you, my friend.

Retired police chief David Lindley. Congratulations. Congratulations to you. You did a lot of great work. Retired police chief David Lindley. Congratulations. Congratulations to you. You did a lot of great work. Thank you. I just finished it. Investigators were finally able to give the victims' families the news they wanted. Betty Jones' sister, Ann McWhorter.

I looked at her picture this morning for the first time in a long time. The tears just flowed down my face. It was just, bet I miss you, even 28 years later. Did you think that you would see this day? No. You can't believe it because 28 years is a very long time, 28 years is a very long time. But there was a bit of excitement there that it's finally done. He's finally been found. Jason Jones was trying to absorb the news so soon after his podcast's final episode.

But his reaction was not as simple as he expected. I thought that I would feel either happy or mad, but the feelings are a lot more complicated than that. I feel a sadness towards him that he was a guy that made a series of terrible choices that resulted in taking something away from us that was irreplaceable. Juki Kriegler-Holt wasn't quite as understanding. He looked like a man to me that probably had no empathy whatsoever. He could care less about anything he did to anybody. Did I feel sorry for him? No. We may now know who knocked on the door that Labor Day night and attacked Betty Jones and Catherine Krigler. But even if this case has

been closed, there are still some questions that remain open. Why did this guy choose Betty and Catherine? What were the circumstances that made him do this? And I know that it won't help, and I know that it won't make anything better, but I think the storyteller in me just needs to know what the end of that story is in order to be able to put it away. the end of that story is in order to be able to put it away. Prosecutors are presenting their case against Michael Devon to a grand jury. To date, there has been no indictment and Devon has not entered a plea. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.