Cold Case Files - A Drop of Blood

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

Indiana police are baffled by the murder of an 86-year-old woman, found dead in her bedroom with a pillow and a footstool on top of her head. With few leads and no conceivable motive the case remains unsolved for years, until a single piece of evidence uncovers Julia Gurty's killer. Get your groceries delivered with HELLO FRESH! Go to www.HelloFresh.com/coldcase80 and use code coldcase80 to get $80 off – including free shipping on your first box! Find affordable online therapy with TALKSPACE. Go to www.Talkspace.com - or download the app - and use code COLDCASE to get $100 off your first month. Meet your financial goals with UPSTART! Go to www.Upstart.com/coldcase to find out how low your Upstart rate is!

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production. Available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. a great gift for your friends and family. On to the show. Nobody answered the phone, so I thought, well, I'll go over and check on her. She was laying there, but there was a pillow over her head and a footstool on top of that pillow. And right here in this hole is the place where his blood was left as he cut himself entering Mrs. Gertie's residence. And it's from that small little spot there that the case was broken. One morning in 1996, in a small Indiana town, an elderly woman was found murdered in her bed. 86-year-old Julia Gertie was the matriarch of the Gertie family.

She didn't have any enemies, and she wouldn't have put up a fight during a burglary, nor was there any sign of a sexually motivated crime. So why would someone brutally murder a helpless old woman for seemingly no reason? That was the first in what would become a long list of questions asked by investigators in the case. And for nearly four years, these questions would go unanswered, torturing the police and the Gertie family, until a single piece of evidence reveals the motive and the murderer

behind Juliette Gertie's brutal death. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files the podcast. I'm Brooke and here's Bill Curtis with a classic case, A Drop of Blood. On a Monday morning, Mary Lou Gerty decides to check in on her 86-year-old mother-in-law, Julia. She hops in her truck and drives around the corner to Julia's farmhouse. On the outside, everything appears to be normal. The inside, however, is a different story.

It looked like somebody had totally ransacked the house, and a lot of things were really, like, thrown around, torn up. Things were out of the cabinet. Mary Lou walks through the house and inches towards Julia's bedroom. In the bedroom, I saw on her bed, she was laying there, but there was a pillow over her head and a footstool on top of that pillow. Julia Gardy lies dead, apparently smothered in her own bed. It was just kind of like a nightmare, like something was happening, but it really shouldn't be happening. Mary Lou races down the road to her sister-in-law's. All of a sudden, Mary Lou came across the yard screaming, Nanny's been murdered, nanny's been murdered,

and somebody robbed her house or something like that. And I thought, what is she saying? And then finally we realized what she was saying, and we called 911 at that point. A call had just come in of the murder, notifying the Sheriff's Department of the murder. Investigator Greg Bricker of the Indiana State Police Department catches the call.

There was no reason for it to happen. And Mrs. Gardy probably wouldn't have offered any resistance to this person whatsoever. And it just wasn't necessary to kill her. It was a vicious cold-blooded murder, no reason whatsoever. It appeared to me to be somebody that had been doing burglaries for a long time,

maybe a professional. He hit all the right spots. Crime scene technician Thomas Kolb is called in to work the scene. Inside the house he notices two distinct styles of ransacking. The main floor was very ransacked. All the drawers had been pulled out, dumped on the floor. Upstairs, however, there is very little ransacking. Upstairs, the drawers were pulled out. You could see things moved, but it wasn't totally dumped on the floor.

The bed just had the covers moved back. So upstairs was kind of neat. And there was also two different sets of shoe prints. So I knew there was two people. I knew one would probably be a male, the other one a female, based on the shoe print. Kolb documents the shoe prints and makes his way to the living room where he gets a close look at the broken window, the possible point of entry. He found the rock beside the TV where it impacted.

And there was curtains so you know that when he came in he had to move the curtains. And you always hope that you find something. So when I examined the curtains, there was a small reddish-brown spot, which to me indicated a blood spot. As soon as I saw the blood, I said, ah, that's great. You know, we have hope now. The curtain is bagged and sent to the crime lab for testing. Meanwhile, Bricker asks Ginny to scan the house and list any stolen items. There were some TVs, there was a VCR, a phone that was missing, and also her silverware was taken.

Bricker checks with local pawn shops but turns up empty-handed. Meanwhile, officers canvas the neighborhood. We had a team of detectives at that point looking for information as to if anybody had saw anybody out of line, if there was anybody hanging around that they didn't know or any vehicles that they could describe to us. Less than a mile down the road, investigators meet Tracy Broxson, a Fort Wayne cop. Broxson tells police that two days before the murder, she caught a strange man snooping around

her house. Well, it was odd that he was trying the gate where the dogs was. I didn't know him. We're a half mile back. Who's back here looking in the windows? Roxen opened her front door, gun in hand, and confronted the men. At that point, he started backing off the porch, and he goes, I'm really lost. I think I'm really at the wrong house type deal. And I said, yes, you are. You're at the wrong house. At this point, he turned and went at a pretty good clip through the yard here, trying to catch up to the van.

Yeah, somebody's casing the neighborhood looking for a house to break into. Bricker circulates Broxson's description of the van and waits for a break. Yeah, it was very frustrating because we weren't getting any information from the public. We had very little information to go on that we gathered at the scene. It was very frustrating. Just no tips, period. Change is constant, but these days it feels like there's something new to grapple with every day. It's important to talk about it and seek support. Talkspace Online Therapy is here to give you that support. Match with a licensed therapist from the convenience of your device.

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They all had alibis, so we came up cold. Now Bricker turns to the crime lab and pins his hopes on science. I obtained a small portion of the curtain with a reddish-brownish stain present. Leslie Harmon is a DNA analyst with the Indiana State Police. On a Monday afternoon, she takes delivery of the Gardie evidence and examines the curtain. I took a small portion of that cutting and started my analysis. The stain is confirmed to be blood. Harmon eventually extracts a DNA profile and puts it into the CODIS database.

The first time that we ran it, there were no hits. There was absolutely no leads on this case. And every lead we did get was a dead end. I just ran out of things to do, places to go, people to look at, and I put the case, I suspended the case until further information came up. Julia Gardy's case is shipped to the cold files, where it will stay for three and a half years, until police track down a woman who is ready to point a finger at a killer.

I remember him grabbing the pillow and I said, no, don't do that. I knew what was going to happen. Three and a half years after Mary Lou Gertie discovered her mother-in-law smothered in her own bed, the case was cold. Much to the investigators and the Gertie family's frustration,

every lead seemed to dry up. One suspect had literally walked up to Officer Boxton's front door, only to evaporate when no one fitting the description had turned up. The single promising piece of case evidence, drops of blood found on Julia's curtain, had been tested and run through CODIS, and it came up empty. With no new evidence, no motive, and no leads, investigators are forced to put the Gertie case on the shelf and wait for a tip or lead to come up to them. Then one day, investigator Mark Helfelfinger received a call that would break the case wide open.

I got a call from my boss. I remember sitting on the couch, and she called me and said, hey Mark, you know the Gardie case? Mark Heffelfinger is a detective with the Indiana State Police. On October 24th, he takes a call about the Julia Gardie case, now nearly four years cold. She said, well we got a DNA match from the blood that was taken from the curtain on the window of that house. It comes back to a guy by the name of Donald Hauser. Indiana periodically runs its cold cases through CODIS, the state's DNA data bank.

It was during such an exercise that the name of Donald Hauser, a convicted burglar, came back as a match. The DNA was a start. That's a starting point and something to look at. That in and of itself won't necessarily get you conviction. So what I needed to do at that point was establish what can I find out about Donald Hauser. Heffelfinger digs through the file and pulls out a name, Angela Stone, Hauser's ex-girlfriend and former burglary accomplice. Within a day, Heffelfinger tracks down Stone and brings her in for

some hard questions. On October 26th, Detective Heffelfinger sits down with Angela Stone and presses her about Julia Gardi's murder. At this time, I truly believe she was a witness. I really believe that. The bottom line is this, of course, in this house here, a lady was killed. Heffelfinger believes Julia Gardy's murder was a burglary gone wrong,

and that Angela Stone might have been in the house when it happened. After almost two hours of back and forth, Angela Stone comes across with the details of how her ex-boyfriend killed Julia Gurdie. I remember him grabbing the pillow, and I said, no, don't do that. I knew what was going to happen.

What? Okay, he did hold the pillow. Explain this to me again. He took it off the chair like this. There was a chair sitting right here. In the bedroom? No, in the living room. And he was standing like this. Where was he?

He took the pillow off the chair and stepped into the bedroom and held that over that leg. And you say you yelled at him? Yeah, I did. Because what I heard was her saying, No, sweetie, no, sweetie. I am excited as can be. I am surprised because I didn't think she'd be that good of a witness.

But actually, if she turns out to be more than a witness, she's an accomplice. That just really helped seal the spot for us. Stone confirms her story with a set of silverware, stolen from Julia Gardy's house and given by Hauser to his mom as a Christmas gift. After recovering the stolen item, cold case detectives are ready to talk with Donald Hauser to his mom as a Christmas gift. After recovering the stolen item, cold case detectives are ready to talk with Donald Hauser. When I go in to talk to Donald Hauser, I got just more ammunition. You know, he can't say, no, it wasn't me.

Your girlfriend at the time says, you did it. She saw you do it. Donald Hauser was brought back to DeKalb County with the jails just across the street there. One day after his conversation with Angela Stone, Detective Heffelfinger meets with Donald Hauser in a small interview room. Grocery shopping can be a hassle, and figuring out new recipes can be a challenge too. So, get fresh, pre-measured ingredients and mouth-watering seasonal recipes delivered right to your door with HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit. There's something for everyone, including low-calorie, vegetarian, and family-friendly recipes with high-quality ingredients every week. Right now, go to

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He tells Hauser he's really out to get Angela Stone and tries to pin him against his ex. When you and Angie were together, okay, there was another part of the reason, okay? I'm trying to figure out what her involvement was in some of this stuff. Okay, if you were in prison, I don't care. You know what I'm saying? But I'm trying to figure out why she's not. Yeah, that's a good question. And I knew that he was in prison now, currently, because of a burglary he'd done,

and which she was there also. And she was not in jail. And I think that was going to be upsetting to him. So I kind of used that as an angle, look, I'm not necessarily interested in you, but you're in jail, Angela's not, why isn't she? Houser takes the bait and starts talking about the string of burglaries he and Stone committed, but denies ever being at the Gardie house.

That is, until Heffelfinger tells him about the blood on the curtain and the stolen silverware set recovered from his mother's house. Hauser switches gears, laying off blame for the murder of Julia Gardie on his former girlfriend and partner in crime, Angela Stone. And she kept saying that we needed to kill her. And so how did you do it? We smothered her with a pillow. Explain how you did that.

I mean, is it something you stood up on the bed, or what did you do? I'm just trying to tell you. I slung the arm and put the pillow over her. Whether he was just ignorant of the fact that he was incriminating himself, or whether he didn't care, or whether he was so focused on getting Angela in jail or what, I'm not sure. But either way, he started talking about Angela being there, what Angela's involvement was. Of course, he couldn't do that without implicating himself also.

Okay, so you just held him over her face? It was quite exciting, but of course I have to be as cool as I couldn't be too and not let him know that I'm excited about the fact that he just implicated himself in a murder. The case against Donald Hauser is complete. Six years after 86-year-old Julia Gardy was murdered, her suspected killer will stand trial. This was obviously one of the strongest cases I'll ever see.

Stephen Klaus prosecutes the case against Donald Hauser. Central to the state's evidence is the DNA. This is the state's exhibit number 28 that was admitted into evidence of the trial, and it's the piece of the curtain that Sergeant Kolb collected from the house that contained Donald Hauser's bloodstain. And right here in this hole is the place where his blood was left as he cut himself entering Mrs. Gardy's residence. And it's from that small little spot there that the case was broken.

On November 11th, Hauser takes the stand and tells the jury he is innocent and that he was on drugs when he confessed. It's a story the jurors don't buy when weighed against the evidence stacked against him. We had an eyewitness who testified well. We had a confession. We had physical evidence from the scene that the suspect left, and we also had physical evidence recovered four years later from his mother's home that he had stolen. All this together really made for a great case to prosecute. After 20 minutes of deliberations, the jury finds Donald Hauser

guilty of murder and sentences him to life without parole. Meanwhile, Angela Stone pleads guilty to burglary and gets 30 years. Well, it was, I was happy. Happy for the family, happy for the community, happy for law enforcement that we can clear this up and we've got somebody off the streets that's capable of killing somebody like Mrs. Gardy because that kind of person, who knows what they could do. For the victim's family, the verdict answers every question

in the death of 86-year-old Julia Gardy, save one. It is both the hardest and simplest of questions. Why? None of the crimes in this podcast are ever justified. Few crimes ever are. But this murder in particular seems so random and inexplicable. Even with the killer behind bars, Julia's family will never stop wondering why their beloved grandma, a woman who called her attacker sweetie until her last breath, was killed so senselessly. To me, crimes like this are scarier

than any others because there's no pattern, no logic. There's nothing to explain the horrific acts. There is no justification or reasoning behind the murder of Julia Gertie. Her murder was a snap decision, a choice made in a split second, and that split second will haunt members of the Gertie family for the rest of their lives. She was definitely no threat to anyone, but it was just really, really senseless because she would have let them had anything just to leave her alone, but they wanted one and more. And a really, really great woman was lost. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings.

Produced by McKamey Lynn, Scott Brody, and Steve Delamater. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. We're distributed by Podcast One. Cold Case Files Classic was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by the one and only Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at aetv.com.