Anatomy of Murder - Benton Jane Doe (Donna Sue Nelton)

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

Human remains found in a field lead an investigator on a decades-long quest. He was determined to uncover whose remains were found, and how they had gotten there.  View source material and photos for this episode at: anatomyofmurder.com/benton-jane-doe/ Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

And the skull was just almost obliterated on that side. You know, if they were not able to get a profile, then that would have shut the door on this case completely. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasiga Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. Buckle up, because today's story has it all. Moonshining, bank robbers, the Kansas City Mafia, and a cold case murder that went unsolved for 32 years. But as you'll hear, it's also the story of how members of law enforcement in a rural county deployed determination, patience, DNA science, and good old gumshoe detective work to solve a mystery that started way back in 1990. It's kind of like putting a puzzle back together, which has always kind of intrigued me.

And I've always liked a beginning and an end. Helping us tell that story is Lieutenant Hunter Petrae, a 25-year veteran of the Sheriff's Office in Benton County, Arkansas, a mostly rural area just west of the Ozark Mountains, also along the border of Missouri and Oklahoma, although you might have heard of it as the corporate home of Walmart. Hunter grew up in Benton County, and he wore a lot of hats before joining the sheriff's office. After college at the University of Arkansas, go Razorbacks, by the way, he first had his sights on a career as an optometrist,

but chose to work in law enforcement instead, first at the county jail, and then transport, records division, parks, and then finally investigations. In other words, he spent a life of service to his community, which, as you might know, has a well-earned reputation for being humble, resilient, and fiercely independent. It's also a community steeped in folklore and storytelling, and more than its share of mysteries. And I can tell you from my experience, no one likes to tell these old stories quite like cops. When I first started here at the sheriff's office, I started hearing about some of these unsolved cases. And for instance, this case from

1990 was one that was brought up frequently. It was the homicide of an unidentified victim that had so far proved impossible to solve. But if you excuse the cliche, there was a new sheriff in town. So I enjoyed trying to solve the investigations and solve these puzzles. And the harder and more complex the case, the better. But this investigation started way back when Hunter was still in high school. So first, we have to go back to that spring morning of May 7th, 1990, when a local man's walk in the woods ended with a disturbing discovery. There was an individual who was out hunting mushrooms on just a stretch of land, basically adjacent to his piece of property that he owned. And he came across these skeletal remains. Probably not what he expected to find when out foraging.

But much like knowing the difference between a chanterelle and the deadly death cat mushroom without being an expert at all, it's not easy to tell if some scattered bones are human or animal. Remember, he's out in nature. So in this case, was it evidence of an actual murder? He wasn't sure initially if they were human remains. So he didn't do anything at the time. He kind of went home, talked to some family members, some friends, did some research, and then came to the conclusion

that they were most likely human remains. So at that point, he contacted the sheriff's office. Deputies were dispatched to the scene and met the man at a remote location, approximately two miles west of Crystal Lake, outside of the tiny town of Decatur, Arkansas. And this is a really rural area. Houses are few and far between. So sheriff's office goes out there, sets up a perimeter, sets up a crime scene. The man directed police to a burned elm tree and what appeared to be a small pile of bone fragments. You know, and there were teeth. there were bits and pieces of a skull.

And they start looking at the remains and determine, yeah, these are in fact human remains. Forensic investigators got to work slowly and methodically collecting the bone fragments and any other evidence that might give them a clue to this unidentified victim's fate. They located at the time shotgun shells. They found pellets, lead pellets, which ended up being number four buckshot from a 12-gauge. But it also appeared that the remains in the area around the remains had been burned. Among the charred remains, they also found the torn remnants

of what appeared to be a woman's undergarment. And that was really kind of the first indication that this was probably a female. Because when you're just looking at skeletal remains out in the open area, it's really difficult to determine sex. What was clear was that this was a crime scene. So as the investigators widened their search perimeter, they collected other potential evidence that they thought could be related to the scene, including a faded brochure from a nearby resort. The Pine Island Resort flyer is basically kind of like a door hanger advertisement for this RV park that was roughly 30 minutes away from the crime scene. They could

have easily discarded this as, yeah, this is not related. But for whatever reason, the detective felt like this is close enough to the remains that this could be connected. The human remains were transported to the medical examiner's office with two goals, one, to determine the cause of death, and two, to hopefully identify the victim. The ME's office did a really good job, and the anthropology department did a really good job. They said, it's a female. We think she's probably 28 to 32. But that's about all they knew. So for the time being, the victim would be identified as Jane Doe. Medical examiners did have better luck determining just how this Jane Doe had died.

But when the remains were sent down to the medical examiner, you know, at the crime lab, they were able to determine that, yeah, the victim was shot close range with a 12 gauge on the left side of the face area. So right away, it was clear that this case was indeed a homicide. But the examination also provided a terrifying glimpse into the victim's last moments before she was murdered. There was also damage to some fingertips that we found, you know, the bones. So there was belief at that time that the victim was probably trying to shield herself and had her hands up by her face and head and that the shotgun blast basically caught her hand and face all at the same time. And the skull was just almost obliterated on that side. I mean, Scott, this really speaks to the brutality of what certainly

appears to be a homicide, right? That fingertips really, you can almost just picture, unfortunately, someone's hands up trying to shield themselves from whatever's coming their way, in this case, the bullets. Yeah, the first thing that comes to my mind is her last few seconds of life. You know, the victim is face to face with her killer with a barrel of a shotgun just inches away. You know, is this somebody who put her hands up, as you said, Anasika, really just to either defend themselves or just show that she wasn't a threat? And then she's executed. And then, of course, afterwards, as the crime scene showed, her remains were burned. No mercy is what it says to me.

You know, this is not a crime of passion or robbery. This was absolutely an execution. But while investigators could theorize the why or the how, ultimately finding her killer was not going to be easy, certainly not without first identifying the victim. Because again, if you can't identify your victim, you have no victimology, no timeline, no known associates or enemies. The possibilities actually are endless.

Those are the hardest cold cases to solve are the unidentified because you just don't have a starting point. You just don't have a Jane Doe. Well, obviously they put out a missing persons or a unidentified persons to all of the local surrounding agencies. Hey, we have a set of remains. Do you guys have any missing people? Specifically, a woman, likely between the ages of 28 and 32, which, I mean, all of us can agree that that is just not a lot to go on. And, you know, Scott, no matter how rural this area may have been, just that age alone, I don't know how that leads them in any direction at all. Clearly, we know from the crime scene, this is where the murder happened. So it wasn't like it happened in some other location and the body is just dumped there, right? So we're going to have to really assume that even with the wide open swath of land here,

there could potentially still be somebody who heard something, some car that drove by or some people walking on the road that may help them identify more than just what we have here between, you know, the ages of 28 or so. That's not a lot to go with. Along with an approximate age, they did have at least a bit of a clue from some teeth fragments that were recovered. There were a couple of individuals that came back through dental records and other things. They were able to kind of exclude those people. And remember, these were fragmented skeletal remains, so there were no fingerprints, and DNA technology was still in its infancy.

DNA was, as far as comparison purposes, was just really not a great option at that point in time. But even without a name, it was clear that this Jane Doe was still the victim of a brutal homicide. So the search was on by law enforcement to find her killer and try to bring him or her to justice. And their search for a suspect would start in the only place it could, right back at the crime scene. Obviously, the individual that located the remains, he's going to be talked to. The man foraging for mushrooms and who had found the remains he's going to be talked to. The man foraging for mushrooms and who had found the remains lived on the adjoining property. So right there you have someone with familiarity and access to the area where this woman was found. Not to say he was a great suspect.

After all, very few killers are also the person that calls it into police. But he did come from a colorful family of brothers that was not always above suspicion from local law enforcement. And there was just some weird things that kind of went along with the family. You know, there was a brother who had supposedly told some friends that he knew who the victim was. And then there was a third brother who committed suicide around this very same time frame in that same area. So obviously, when you have all those factors, yeah, they're going to be looked at. The finder of the remains had another brother that lived alone in a trailer on the property

next to where the bones had been found. And along with hunting, fishing, and selling untaxed liquor, also known as moonshine, he had a fondness for telling tales, including some very odd ones about women. There were other people that talked about him saying at some point that he wanted to kidnap a girl and kind of chain her up and that maybe he had quite possibly committed this crime. Obviously, statements like these are going to raise some major red flags. So that brother was brought in for questioning. But even with his record of minor crimes and his healthy suspicion of authority, his denial that he had anything to do with this woman's murder, it sounded credible.

Still, his proximity to the crime scene, his small arsenal of shotguns, and the coincidence of his third brother's recent death by suicide, it all just seemed a little off. But as we know, bad thoughts, whether it's wanting to do something like kidnap or whether due to depression or another mental health factor, none of those things prove murder. So authorities really had no hard evidence to tie him to the crime, nor did he have any more valuable information to share about who might be behind it. As for the third brother's recent death by suicide?

When they started looking at it a little bit deeper, it seemed to stem from a domestic situation, really totally unrelated to our crime. Further canvassing of the surrounding areas yielded no new suspects or leads, but there was a witness who was able to provide one more small piece to the puzzle. During one of those canvases, one of the detectives talked to a neighbor who lives kind of adjacent to the property, about a quarter of a mile away, and he remembered specifically sometime in the middle of February 1990 that there was a huge large fire in that general vicinity where the remains were found. So it's possible that that's when the

murder took place. Where the killer had gone in the three months since that fire was anyone's guess. Several years after the discovery of unidentified remains in a remote area of western Arkansas, the case known as the Benton Jane Doe remained unsolved. Not only did police not have any leads on the killer, they still didn't even know who had been killed. You know, there are cold cases and then there are cold cases that are frozen. After so many years, you know, witnesses pass away, family members pass away, even detectives that work the case pass away. So sometimes it's just really difficult. But as time went on, there were some promising advancements with forensics that kept the hope alive that the Benton Jane Doe

would finally get a name and the justice she deserved. They tried back in the mid-90s to do a facial reconstruction of the skull. And they put it together the best they could, but too many pieces missing and too shattered to do any significant, you know, it wasn't there. Years later, in 2008, when DNA testing had become more widely available and reliable, the remains were sent to the University of North Texas in an attempt to develop a DNA profile.

Keep in mind that the bones were burned, which can severely degrade any biological material and make it almost impossible to extract a viable DNA sample. But somehow they managed and a mitochondrial DNA profile was developed. More importantly, it finally gave investigators in Arkansas something to use in a search for a possible match. They were able to put her into the NamUs database. And basically what NamUs is, is it's the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Database. So there are missing people entered into NamUs. There are also unidentified remains, profiles entered into NamUs. And what NamUs does is it will go out and it will try to connect those

and cross-match those and cross-search those to try to see if they can locate a match. Unfortunately, they found no match anywhere amongst the thousands of missing persons in the system. And that meant bad news for this increasingly cold case. Basically, from that point, it just kind of went nowhere. Except into a cardboard box and onto a shelf, like many, too many unsolved homicides across the country. And, you know, Scott, even just hearing you say that, I just think about it's such a good way to kind of look at exactly what we talk about cold cases, because we're seeing how they happen here. It's not like a case just goes cold.

Like there's a reason behind it here. They have these remains that there's really little to go off in. And then after a while, like you just run out, unfortunately, sometimes of anywhere to go, right? But for that later technology or someone coming forward. So I just think, unfortunately,

this is a great example of how a case goes cold. Cold cases are a daunting task, no matter what. They're cold. There's no new information that moved them from where they were then to where they are today unless the case gets a fresh pair of eyes, which means going through files and files and names and trying to determine

if anybody can give any new information. And then it's how do you choose the cases, right? You look at a table full of files of cases that are cold, and you try to determine which one at that very moment may be solvable. It's not easy. But now from that same shelf, we take that box and enter our self-professed puzzle lover, Lieutenant Hunter Petrae. When I moved into criminal investigations,

you know, we really didn't have a cold case division, which is not unheard of. You know, a lot of agencies around the country, it's a budgetary manpower issue. They just don't have a special division dedicated to cold cases because you have so many new cases coming in that you basically try to stay above water. And Scott, once again, with this case, it is the insight into how it is and why it is that not every jurisdiction has a cold case unit. It really does come down to money and you can only stretch those dollars so far. And Hunter says it well. I mean, it's a budgetary issue and a manpower issue. So can you dedicate one person, five people, any amount of detectives who are able to go back and do this tedious work?

Not every agency has the resources or the ability to do that. And it's a shame in a way because these cases deserve to be looked at. And these families who have been waiting decades for justice may never see it because the resources and the manpower are not in place. But that doesn't mean that they don't get looked at. But like any born investigator, unsolved cases, especially ones that occurred in your own hometown, they're just too tempting to ignore. But I took it upon myself once I got into criminal investigations to say,

hey, okay, these boxes that are sitting, you know, in evidence that are unsolved, we need to try to do some justice for these and try to take another look at these. However, with no suspects, no leads, and not even a name of their victim, the Benton Jane Doe homicide seemed least likely to ever be solved. My job and my feeling was that if I can advance this case in any way possible so that the next person behind me can pick up and maybe advance it a little bit more, then maybe at some point in time, these cases could be solved. But if he had any hope of advancing it at all, he would have to start at the beginning. And within that box,

you're looking for something that stands out. I would take a look at the evidence and say, okay, you know, is there something that the detective didn't do? Is there something that the detective missed? Technology has changed. So is there evidence that we've previously submitted or not submitted that we can resubmit? Because DNA has changed everything. DNA, the three magic letters that are music to the ears of any cold case detective. True, but there's the reality. I think we've gotten so used to hearing how DNA cracks cases. It's easy to forget that there is a pretty wide spectrum of success when

it comes to creating and matching DNA profiles. You know, and with that, we have to remember that there can be all sorts of profiles coming in, being there can be full profiles, there can be partial profiles, there can be mixtures, there can be all sorts of things that hinder a lab's ability to really make heads or tails of samples they receive. And that is if there's even enough or if science has caught up to the type of technology needed for a particular sample. And just remember, in this case, they created a DNA profile from the Benton Jane Doe in 2008. And it was not totally complete, meaning it would only really have been a value if it can be compared one-on-one with a viable suspect, which, of course, they just didn't have.

But the good news was this. The technology was improving by the day in the ability to collect it, extract it, and create profiles from smaller and smaller piece of evidence, even like here, fragments of burnt bones. I reached out to our crime lab again and I said, hey, can we resubmit some things? Can you guys look at the bones again? Can we try to get another profile? But as you can imagine, not all crime labs are created equal or benefit from the same amount of resources. One of our crime lab's issues with getting a DNA profile is they said, after so many attempts over the years, they didn't think that they were even going to be able to get a decent profile

because of the age and the bones sitting out in the elements and also the fact that they had been burned, which is not great for preservation of DNA. But the lab did say that he was welcome to take his evidence to a private lab, which may have the technology to give him hopefully some more success. And at that point in time, I also brought up forensic genetic genealogy, because I had seen on the news, I think it was a year prior to that, maybe in 2018, with the Golden State Killer.

They caught him using some of this genetic genealogy. So I thought, okay, you know, this is not witch science. This is proven science. Even though our lab doesn't have that ability, they've told me that we can go through a private lab. I've had experience recently working with a private lab in Florida for my Cold Case podcast series, and they're privately funded.

They have the most up-to-date technology. And the staff were able to really assist law enforcement in working on the cold case. Make no mistake, it's a highly competitive business between private labs and state-funded labs. That is not to knock the private labs. But again, if we look at what's going to get into court, they have to be accredited and credited in certain states.

And there's a lot more that goes into it. But again, certainly at these stages in the getting the answers, well, that's number one. And then you decide if and what you can do with it from there. And here in March of 2021, Hunter met with forensic scientists at Othram, Inc., a private lab located in Houston, Texas. When we met with them, they were able to prove, able to show us the cases that they had helped solve. And we knew at that point in time that, yeah, we're going to do this. We need to do this. The sheriff's office then coordinated with the Benton County Prosecutor's Office to help facilitate the transfer of remains from Arkansas to Texas. There are certain bones, basically, where it's more viable to get DNA from, such as teeth and long bones.

So, Othram kind of coordinated with our lab as far as which bones they wanted. And safe to say it felt like it just might be their last shot at identifying their Jane Doe. You know, if they were not able to get a profile, then that would have shut the door on this case completely. to say it felt like it just might be their last shot at identifying their Jane Doe. You know, if they were not able to get a profile, then that would have shut the door on this case completely. But lo and behold, on September 23rd, 2021, Othram notified Hunter back in Bentonville that they were able to successfully develop a new DNA profile of their murder victim. Which then gave Hunter the ability to do something that no investigator could do when their remains had been located, which remember was over 30 years before,

and that was genealogical forensics. At that point in time, what happens is that profile is kind of uploaded into one of those public databases similar to, you've seen Ancestry, you've seen 23andMe, there's GEDmatch. These are places where the general public and genealogy hobbyists can submit their own DNA in search for family members and far-flung relatives as they research their family trees. Or to figure out what area of the world their ancestors came from, which for me at least partially would be from Iceland. But in criminal investigations, these databases can also be used to find anyone that might be a close match to a sample of unidentified DNA. The victim's profile

is uploaded in the database and it's kind of compared to all of the existing profiles that are in there. Sometimes you get a distant match. Sometimes you get a more closer match of a family member. The hope, of course, is that you find a family member that says, yes, I have a brother or a sister that went missing. And that information alone can help break a case. They were basically able to tell me that they had identified a lady that was fairly closely related to our victim. So at that point in time, we were pretty excited that, OK, this thing's advancing. We got a chance to solve this, at least not necessarily who killed her, but who this victim is. But the woman he spoke with, she didn't know of anyone in her family that had ever gone missing.

I kind of explained to her, I know this is a strange phone call, but promise you that somebody in your immediate family is related to this victim. It turned out that the woman's mother had run away from home and was estranged from her extended family. I thought, great, we're hitting another brick wall here. But she was able to provide Hunter with some names of her siblings, all of who she hadn't seen or talked to in decades. So no longer did this feel like a wild goose chase. It was more like fishing in a stocked pond. He knew his victim was out there. He just needed to cast his line in just the right spot. Fortunately for me, I had done a genealogy project on my family several years prior. So I

felt really confident that I can solve this thing on my own. I don't need the DNA. I've got a name. I can go out and I can solve this now. I can figure out who this is. You know, I just need to get everybody that's part of the picture and then just start eliminating people one by one. But with every call and every name scratched off the list, Hunter was getting closer and closer to a truth about this Jane Doe that no one had ever expected. In Benton County, Arkansas, Lieutenant Hunter Petrae was leveraging a new tool in the investigator's toolbox, genealogical forensics. Armed with a list of names of people whose DNA was a familial match to the remains found in the Arkansas woods back in 1990,

Hunter hoped it would be only a matter of time before he could identify his victim and eventually her killer. I've got all these names. I'm Googling, searching obituaries, weddings, anything that you can imagine. I'm looking through, trying to figure out, is this the direct line for my victim? And then all of a sudden, I'm reading this obituary and I come across this name and it's Donna Sue Nelton. Donna Sue Nelton was one of several family members listed in a woman's obituary. And I thought, that name, Donna Sue Nelton, sounds so familiar to me. This is not a coincidence. Where have I seen this name? So I started looking back through the case file and just found on a sheet of notebook paper. Buried deep in the Benton Jane Doe case file was a handwritten note recording a phone call received by a Benton County Sheriff's deputy back in 1995.

The caller was Donna Sue's mother. So this would have been like five years after the remains were found that Donna Sue's mother called in and basically told the detective at the time, you know, I'm not sure my daughter's been missing. We haven't heard from her. We haven't seen her. To be fair, the call was likely one of hundreds that the sheriff's office received over the many years this case had been open. Worried parents the world over would usually stop at nothing to find a missing child. And this includes cold calling law enforcement. Not to say that this call was ignored, but it does sound like it may not have been elevated

to the highest priority. It wasn't typed into any type of report. I found it just on some detective notes, you know, notes that the detective took and put in the case file and stored it away to be forgotten. But immediately, Hunter saw the coincidence that this Jane Doe's DNA matched someone in the family of a woman that was reported missing to the Benton County authorities. Not only that, but while Donna Sue Nelton was listed as deceased, there was no date of her death. Even though her name showed as deceased in the obituary, I couldn't find any death record for her. Couldn't find anything. So it was basically like she just didn't exist.

One of the only ways I could explain that would be if someone had gone missing and presumed that. And I thought, with the DNA that Authrum is saying that this family's connected, with that mother calling in, that obituary, all of this stuff combined, that is not a coincidence. I felt very strongly at that time that our victim was probably Donna Sue. In August of 2022, Hunter was able to track down a man that he believed to be Donna Sue Nelton's brother to try to confirm his hunch. I basically said, look, don't hang up. I know this sounds like a weird phone call, but we have this cold case that we're working. I'm a detective with the sheriff's office, and I think this may be your sister. Is your sister Donna Sue?

And he said, yes. And I said, okay, is she still missing? And he said, yes. Wow. Can you imagine? Your sister goes missing more than 30 years ago, three decades, and you and your family searched for her for years, not having any idea what could have happened. And then you get a phone call like this. He couldn't believe it at first, you know, 30something years to get a random phone call on a Saturday out of the blue, I'm sure it was pretty shocking to him. In September of that same year, 2022, DNA from Donna's brother was collected and compared to the unidentified remains. And it was a match. And basically that proved that it was Donna Sue. Donna Sue Nelton would have been 28 years old when she was shot to death in 1990.

32 years later, investigators could finally put a name to their victim, the Benton Jane Doe. The next step was to prove who killed Donna. Once we identified her, we were able to start that victimology. By talking to the family, Hunter determined that Donna Sue was last seen in the fall of 1989. But it was who she was seen with that really raised eyebrows. We found out that she was running with this individual named George Bruton. He was a bad dude. The bad that Hunter's referring to is not the keep your daughter out late on a school night kind of bad. It's the on the FBI's most wanted list bad. He kidnapped some people. He shot some

cops. He supposedly killed a guy in Kansas City. He was a career bank robber, thief, made methamphetamine. We ran his criminal history. It stretched all the way back into the 1960s. When we printed it off, I didn't think the printer was ever going to stop. Bruton had been captured by FBI agents in a shootout in 1980 and had been sent to prison. But he was paroled in 1988 and presumably met Donna Sue shortly after he got out. Now, the FBI had been keeping close tabs on him and his local gang, which allegedly had ties to the Kansas City Organized Crime Syndicate, none of which would have been a secret to Donna Sue Nelton.

She was probably complicit in a lot of their activities. In fact, the couple were inseparable, spending hours together on the road and on the move, frequenting an RV resort just across the border from Benton County, the same resort whose brochure was found near Donna Sue's remains. But then something must have happened, because it was around that same time that Donna Sue was first reported missing by her family. At some point in time, late fall 1989, she just vanished off the radar. So yes, Donna Sue had been mixed up with some, I'll say, problematic characters,

and it was reported that she may well have been part of whatever that they were up to. But to Hunter, she was first missing and now his victim, and he was going to do whatever he could to figure out what happened to her. The clues would come from the federal case file from the FBI's investigation into George Bruton. The FBI was on to Bruton. They're doing surveillance, and they see Bruton and another associate carrying out these trash bags from this apartment complex and throwing them into this dumpster. And when they leave, they kind of go over there and get the stuff out of the dumpster. And it's all of Donna Sue's belongings.

And around that same time, FBI agents also searched a storage unit belonging to George Bruton and found a car registered to Donna Sue, one that obviously hadn't been driven in a while. So it sounds like back in 1989, the FBI had a pretty good idea of what happened to Donna Sue Nelton. The FBI thought that she had been killed by George Bruton. They were in the process of trying to locate her body and trying to prove that fact. Bruton was eventually arrested in April of 1990 on a parole violation and indicted on drug charges after being identified as the leader of some sort of a multi-state drug ring. But he was never charged in Donasue's murder. Even though this queer criminal had been seen disposing

of his missing girlfriend's belongings and was in possession of a car. But just in case you don't think that was enough probable cause, there was also this. There was also an informant in one of the prisons who basically said that Bruton had directly told him that he killed a girl named Donna and that he had buried her over on this piece of land in Missouri. And look, the FBI did search this property in Missouri. But as we know, they were looking in the wrong area based on what this inmate had said. And so they found nothing. But then, and this is the bewildering part, and it's hard to Monday morning quarterback

without knowing everything that's actually in that file. But from there, it does seem like nothing else was ever done. For whatever reason, she was never entered into any kind of missing persons database. She wasn't in NCIC. She had never been put into NamUs as a missing person. It appears at that point in time that the case just, as far as her being missing, just kind of stopped. But looking back at this decades-old case, you know, it looks like some errors were definitely made by the original investigators in this, and the FBI allowing the

gathering of all this material and not really giving that information to county investigators. So at least some wire crossing here. Bruton was being watched by the FBI. He had Donna Sue's belongings. She was never listed as missing on any database or anything national at all. And it does seem like the story just stops there. Bruton was indicted on drug charges. He was sentenced to life.

Never saw the light of day again. The missing persons aspect of Donna Sue kind of went cold as well. Also left out in the cold, Donnasu's family and the Benton County Sheriff's Office. It shows the lack of and the difficulty of communication between law enforcement agencies at that time, because this was roughly 100 miles away. We've got an unidentified person. We send it out. They've got a missing person. And just nobody was able to connect the dots

that, hey, this might be connected. But fast forward 30 years, and investigators finally did have the proof that Donna Sue had been murdered. And they also had circumstantial evidence linking her then-boyfriend George Bruton to the crime. And according to a statement by the FBI's informant, he knew why. In the weeks leading up to her disappearance, Donna Sue was threatening to turn Bruton in.

There was information from this informant that basically laid out that Donna Sue had somehow given information on Bruton and that he killed her in retaliation for that. It is a strong motive, especially if he was part of something bigger than himself. And there were allegations of ties to organized crime. Now, there was no official record that Donna Sue had been cooperating with the authorities, but it is a theory that her own family had held onto for years. Several months later, the sister called me and said, hey, you know, I know you've been trying to get a hold of me. I'm sorry I haven't called you. I just don't know who to trust. And I said, hang on, wait a minute. What do you mean? You're not sure who you can trust? She said, look, Donna Sue was involved in

a lot of stuff. She was associated with a lot of bad people. And I just don't know who to talk to because I didn't want somebody coming back on the family. Because some of these associates that Donna Sue was running around with had ties to the Kansas City Mafia. Donna Sue's sister had known all along that her sister's life was in danger, but she also held out the hope that she was still alive. And she also said that she just couldn't believe that Donna Sue was dead. She felt like and had been told by, quote, someone that Donna Sue was in the witness protection program. She said there was one time she went into a grocery store years after, saw a lady that looked like her sister and wondered if that could be Donna Sue.

You know, to be sitting there all those years later and wondering if someone you see, could it be your sister? And then it just makes you wonder where she is and if she's alive or dead. It's just its own type of torture in and of itself. But any hope that this sister or any of them had was dashed when investigators finally identified Donna Sue's remains and uncovered the truth about her violent end. Your heart just kind of breaks for them, you know, because I get it. It's a sibling and they were close and you don't want to think that something like that could happen. George Bruton died in federal prison in 2008.

He never faced justice for what he did to Donna Sue, nor did he ever face the man determined to deliver that justice. When I looked him up in the system and saw deceased, yeah, my heart kind of sank a little bit. As a detective, that's your dream is to try to confront somebody like that and let them know that even if they don't confess, let them know that you know. But look at what Hunter did achieve in finding Donna Sue and making sure that she got her name back and helping her surviving family understand what happened to her. He was able to close a painful chapter in their lives. They're never going to have closure, full closure.

Never. It gives them some small degree of closure, I think, just to be able to get their sister back and be able to bury her. As a detective, it makes you feel good on the inside that you were able to get that. Because like I said, man, when I first started this case review on these cases, they're just boxes on a shelf with the name on the side of the box, nothing more. And I could have easily, or anybody else could have easily just turned a blind eye and went to the next case and left this sitting up there in a box. But just something

drives me to try to get some closure and some justice for the victims. And that drive is why Hunter and the thousands of law enforcement out there that continue to demonstrate perseverance, patience, and the unbending dedication to the victims of unsolved crimes continue to do their jobs, to serve their communities, and to never stop reaching for that next dusty box on the shelf. You know, it's for all the detectives and investigators that worked this case initially that are no longer here, retired, deceased, whatever. It's for the family.

It's just an important thing to me to try to get some of these cases solved. Even though it's believed that Donna Sue was running with a bad crowd at the time of her murder, just look at the details of the crime scene and her last few seconds of life. She was a victim. As a society, we tend to judge people without knowing all of the factors that may have led them down a bad path. Even if the person was engaged in criminal activities, the moment they become a victim of crime, such as murder, the justice system views them through the lens of victimhood. Their murder remains a murder, and it demands the same level of investigation, empathy, and pursuit of justice

as any other case. It took 32 years for Benton Jane Doe to get back her name, which means that Donna Sue Nelton was given back her identity. For decades, she'd been characterized by the bones that were found and what could be determined from them about her death. Donna Sue's life sounds as though it had its fair share of ups and downs, but that doesn't mean that she didn't matter. Her killer thought he could discard her and burn her body and that no one would find her. And if they did, no one would

care. He was wrong. I don't see this story as primarily being told because law enforcement now believes that they know who killed her. While that is important for sure, the heart of this story is the perseverance that Hunter demonstrated along with those that worked with him to give an identity back to the person whose bones were found in the ground and then give a family the answers that they had been waiting for about what happened to Donna Sue. So thank you, Lieutenant. And to Donna Sue, today this AOM community, we remember you. It's been many years, but you have not been forgotten. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.

Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond, researched by Kate Cooper, edited by Ali Sirwa, Megan Hayward, and Philjean Grande. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?