Cold Case Files - A Sealed Fate

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

37 years after his first killing, a career criminal is finally brought to justice. DNA collected from saliva on sealed envelopes connects the unsuspecting murderer to a series of vicious attacks spanning multiple states and decades. Sponsors: Hydrow: Head over to Hydrow.com and use code COLDCASE to save up to five hundred dollars! 

From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. Southern California in the mid-60s, a murder scene etched in black and white and captured on 16mm film by a news crew. The victim is a young mother named Cheryl Burnett, found raped and strangled inside her apartment by a neighbor. Cheryl was on the bed. I took her pulse. There was no pulse. She was very cold. And I knew she was dead. Jerry Earp is lead detective at the scene and one of the first to view the body.

I observed her body lying on the bed. Her face was covered with a black silk slip. She was nude, and quite obviously the cord from the drapery used as a garrote was entwined around her throat. From a forensic standpoint, 1965 is worlds away from CSI. There's no DNA to process, no laser lights available to search for evidence. Detectives remove the body, dust the scene for prints, and begin their investigation by learning all they can about the victim. Neighbors once again provide the starting point. And she was just recently divorced. She was quite popular and a lovely person, a wonderful personality, very friendly. She had been going to a Catholic church, taking instructions to join the church, and she had

indicated a rather close relationship with a priest to some of her friends. How close a relationship is the question Earp once answered. His interest in the priest in question, Father John Lowerman, sharpens when religious candles are found near the body. Earp tracks down the priest, who tells police he was giving Burnett private catechism lessons, many times late at night, but denies any involvement in the 19-year-old's murder. Over the next few days, Detective Earp becomes convinced that Father Lowerman is not coming entirely clean. Because of his personal guidance with her and certain statements that he had made to a waitress at a bar that gave rise to him as being a very strong suspect. According to the waitress,

Lowerman was a regular at the bar. One night, after a few stiff drinks, he allegedly told her that he was responsible for Cheryl Burnett's murder. With this information, Father Lowerman rises to the top of the suspect list. Two weeks into the investigation, as police work on establishing

a link between the priest and the murder, they're called to the scene of another homicide, this one also in El Cajon and two miles from Cheryl Burnett's residence. It's June 23, 1965. Louis and Lola Mercer have been married for 28 years. They've just moved into a new apartment complex at 538 Chamber Street. 1965. Louis and Lola Mercer have been married for 28 years. They've just moved into a new apartment complex at 538 Chamber Street. On their fifth night in the new home, a man climbs through an open window and attacks the couple in their bedroom. When police arrive on the scene, Louis Mercer is dead and Lola is barely alive. He had been brutally, I mean brutally, bludgeoned about the head area and upper torso. His wife had also been bludgeoned, received severe trauma to her head, and she had been raped.

Lola Mercer is rushed to the hospital. She suffered irreversible brain damage and can't remember anything about the attack. Semen evidence is collected, but there is little else available in the form of physical evidence. As the police hunt for a rapist and killer, the town of El Cajon begins locking its doors.

It was very shocking. El Cajon at that time doors. It was very shocking. El Cajon at that time was, what, about 40,000 people. And because of the closeness, geographically, of the two homicides, people were quite concerned. Detectives believe the Burnett and Mercer crimes might be linked, which leads to a troubling question. Could their chief suspect in the Burnett and Mercer crimes might be linked, which leads to a troubling question. Could their chief suspect in the Burnett killing, Father John Lowerman, also be responsible for the Mercer attack?

As detectives investigate this possibility, yet another avenue of investigation opens up. This time, in the town of La Mesa, six miles north of El Cajon. On July 5th, 1965, a man breaks into the home of a La Mesa nurse, assaults her, and leaves her barely alive. Police canvass the area and find a neighbor who chased away a prowler just a few nights prior and managed to jot down the man's tag number. Detectives run the plates back to a former felon named Clyde Cole Wilkerson. The 27-year-old is put in a lineup and ID'd by the La Mesa nurse as her attacker. Wilkerson is booked on a charge of attempted murder. A few days later, Jerry Earp catches wind of Wilkerson's arrest and his pattern

of attack. Earp wonders about the similarity to his unsolved cases in El Cajon. There was quite a bit of similarity in that attack and looking back and reviewing Wilkerson's history, he was developed primarily at that time as a suspect in the Mercer homicide. Detective Earp pays a visit to Wilkerson as he sits in the county jail awaiting trial. Wilkerson, however, is not talking about the Mercer case, the Burnett case, or anything else. I think it got about as far as me identifying myself as a detective with the Elkhorn Police Department. And that was the end of the meeting. In November of 1965, Clyde Wilkerson is sentenced to five years to life for the attack in La Mesa. All the while he, along with Father John Lowerman, remain strong suspects in the El Cajon murders. We didn't have enough evidence to even begin to charge anyone

in either of the two cases, but he and the priest were both considered suspects in both cases. The Catholic Church shuttles Father Lowerman to an out-of-state facility for alcohol rehab, in effect ending police contact with the suspect. Carl Wilkerson does his time in jail, but remains silent on the El Cajon killings. In time, both investigations go cold, and detectives are left to ponder who their killer might be. A convicted rapist? A Catholic priest? Or someone else altogether? Summer is coming, and I always want to look and feel my best. Now that it's time for shorts and

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That is, until June 6th, when 19-year-old Cheryl Burnett is found raped and strangled to death in her bedroom in El Cajon. Two weeks later, Louis and Lola Mercer are attacked in their home. Louis is bludgeoned to death, Lola sexually assaulted, and left with permanent brain damage. Within a year, both cases are cold and stay that way for over three decades. Then, in 1999, detectives John Waddell and Robert Anderson reopened the cases. They had been shelled due to either no leads or the technology wasn't present at the time, and so he brought the cases back out to take a look at it, see if there was anything that could be done with technology now that wasn't available at that time.

Waddell reads through a file of Cheryl Burnett and focuses on statements made by the investigation's chief suspect, a Catholic priest named John Lowerman. of her body, he showed up at a local bar and had scratches on his face and proceeded to get drunk and tell basically anybody at the bar who was listening that he was responsible for Cheryl's death. So people started looking at him. Waddell hopes technology will help to determine if this man of God did the work of the devil. Stored away in a police warehouse are items of evidence collected 34 years earlier at the Burnett crime scene. Among them, a sheet taken from Burnett's bed. Connie Milton

of the San Diego Sheriff's Crime Lab is asked to examine it for possible DNA evidence. I just took random cuttings and prepared slides to look under the microscope and lo and behold I found at that time it was 34 year old sperm that were still intact on this sheet. Milton is able to develop a DNA profile from the semen. Cold case detectives believe that profile to be the genetic signature of the man who raped and killed Cheryl Burnett. The critical question, is it also the genetic signature of the Catholic priest? The answer to that question lies six feet under, as cold case detectives discover that Father Lowerman died in 1972, still under suspicion of murder.

The only way to get DNA from Lowerman was to go ahead and exhume him. So we can compare that to the evidence that we had at the scene and see if there was a match. It's January 13th, the year 2000. On a winter morning at Holy Cross Cemetery, John Waddell and a team of forensic scientists begin to unearth the grave of the priest. Lauerman's bone fragments and dental tissue are sent to a private DNA lab for testing.

Once a profile is established, scientists compare it against DNA found at the Burnett crime scene. Six months later, Woodell receives the results. I told him that the priest was not a potential contributor to the semen stains that were found on the sheet. After 35 years of speculation, DNA confirms that Father John Lowerman did not kill Cheryl Burnett, a crime for which he had been a suspect for over three decades. Woodell is back to square one until he begins to compare notes with Detective Robert Anderson, who is working the Mercer case. He and I were just a couple offices apart at the time. And so I was talking to him about my case and he was talking to me about his case.

There was some similarities and there was some mention in both cases that referred to the other one. So we were going back and forth and the one commonality that was in both of the case files was Clyde Wilkerson. Clyde Wilkerson broke into a home and assaulted a woman just a few weeks after the Burnett and Mercer killings. Along with Father Lowerman,

Wilkerson was considered a hot suspect in 1965. With the priest now eliminated as a suspect, Wilkerson now considered a hot suspect in 1965. With the priest now eliminated as a suspect, Wilkerson now takes center stage. I went through and tried to collect every single report that Wilkerson was involved in so that I could know as much about him as I could. What Anderson finds is a criminal record spanning nearly 50 years and a vast portfolio of violent crime with an

emphasis on armed robbery and rape. Cold case detectives decide they need to track down Clyde Wilkerson and more importantly, get a sample of his DNA. Continental Express is a long-range trucking company based out of Little Rock, Arkansas. Its fleet consists of 518 wheelers with hundreds of drivers assigned to the various rigs. From 1996 to 2000, Clyde Wilkerson worked for Continental as a driver. Cold case detectives ask if Continental might have saved any of its employee records. Continental Express turns over paperwork mailed in from the road by truckers,

and even the envelopes those invoices were mailed in. When they go out on the road and they get receipts and bill of ladings and things of that nature, they all go into an envelope, the person seals it, and it goes with the paperwork into their file. Detectives seize the envelope sent in by Wilkerson and send them to criminalist Connie Milton, who believes she has a good chance at collecting a sample of the suspect's DNA.

When you lick an envelope, you're getting cells from your tongue that are deposited on that envelope, and they're basically going to stay there. The envelope is sealed, those cells, your saliva, it's going to be there. Milton selects three envelopes for testing and is able to extract the same DNA profile from all three. That profile is then compared to the semen evidence collected at the Burnett homicide. So I then pulled out the DNA report I had from the sperm on Cheryl Burnett's sheet. And I started going through each of the markers

and looking at it, and I was just in shock that it matched. Milton picks up the phone and shares her results with Detective John Waddell. I said, well, I got the DNA from the envelopes, and it's him. It matches the sheet. And his reaction was equally as excited as mine. A lot of yelling, lots more phone calls,

letting people know what's going on, everybody's all excited. 37 years after the fact, Milton has linked Clyde Wilkerson to the murder of Cheryl Burnett. Next, the criminalist runs Wilkerson's profile against semen evidence collected in the Mercer homicide. Again, the result is a perfect genetic match. I mean, once Burnett was made, that was the key. And then once Mercer came back, that was great too. We had both made, that was the key. And then once Mercer came back, that was great, too. We had both cases, and it was the same suspect.

Clyde Wilkerson, career criminal, now a probable serial killer. Cold case detectives take up the hunt for their suspect. And along the way, find yet another body. Life can be seen as such a gift when you're staring death in the eyes. He's probably six inches from my face and then he aimed at my head, emptied out the three or four more bullets. Unbelievable tales from everyday people

that narrowly escaped their demise. Stories from real-life survivors. And these sharks are around here. And they circled around the boat that whole day. What's going to happen? Are we going to be alive the next day or are we going to be fish food? A podcast on how terrifying life can get. He repeatedly told me that if I told anybody that he would kill me and my family members.

Listen to the I Survived podcast to hear how tragedy turns into triumph. There's a point where your mind kind of takes over and you find out you're a lot stronger than you are. I Survived is available now, wherever you get your podcasts. In 1965, Cheryl Burnett was raped and murdered. A week later, Louis Mercer was murdered. His wife, Lola, raped and left with irreversible brain damage. Both murders occurred in the small town of El Cajon, California, and both go cold.

37 years later, DNA from semen left at each crime scene had been matched to Clyde Carl Wilkerson, a man with a criminal past, a man who thought he got away with murder. In October of 2002, cold case detectives meet face-to-face with Wilkerson to let him know how wrong he was. It's October 29, 2002. Cold case detectives trace their suspect to a trailer home in Benton, Arkansas. Unaware that he is suspected in two cold case homicides, Wilkerson has made no attempt to hide his identity or whereabouts. Even as he is placed under arrest, the career criminal is unsure exactly why.

At the time, he had a functioning meth lab in his trailer. And I believe that at first he thought that's what we were there for. And it wasn't until sometime later that we had to convince him that we were not from California to arrest him for this drug lab in Arkansas, that we were actually there for these unsolved homicides. Three days later, Clyde Wilkerson returns to California in handcuffs. Sir, are you Clyde Carl Wilkerson? Yes. Denied bail, Wilkerson sits in the San Diego County Jail

and awaits his day in court. Deputy DA Dan Lamborn is assigned the task of compiling the case that will put Clyde Wilkerson behind bars for the rest of his life. I was confident that we had a solid case that a reasonable jury would look at and convict. You can never make predictions. We know this in this business. You can't predict what a jury is going to do. But we felt that we had the evidence to convince a jury. One week before Wilkerson's trial is set to open, the suspect pleads guilty to the murders of Cheryl Burnett and Louis Mercer and the rape and attempted homicide of Lola Mercer.

Sentencing is set for the following month. On April 15th, 2003, Clyde Wilkerson arrives back in court to be sentenced. Also in court that day, people whose lives have been forever fractured by the violence visited on their loved ones. Stephen Harris is the grandson of Louis and Lola Mercer. It's been a very traumatic time for the last couple of decades, waiting and hoping for something to occur in the case. And I applaud the tenacity of the El Cajon Police Department and those detectives that worked the case for their assistance in finally bringing Mr. Wilkerson to justice. Sabree Burnett grew up never knowing her grandmother, Cheryl Burnett.

Too emotional to read it herself, Sabree stands by as Deputy DA Dan Lamborn reads her statement to the court. I address the court today on behalf of my family that isn't here to see the end of the great tragedy that has affected our family for over 37 years. Cheryl was a beautiful, smart, talented, sweet, and supportive woman. She was strong, not only physically, but emotionally. I know this because I have talked to people who knew her and because of one man, one single solitary man, I will never know her." As very emotional just seeing

after 37 years how these atrocious acts that he'd committed still had effects, still affected people in tragic ways, decades after the murder. It is therefore the judgment and sentence of this court that the defendant be imprisoned in state prison for the indeterminate sentence of life. Clyde Wilkerson leaves the courtroom in cuffs and returns to a California jail cell, where he will most likely spend the rest of his days. Cold case detectives, however, are not yet finished with Wilkerson. The only time Clyde ever stopped doing anything is when he got caught.

So he's got lots of free time in between arrests and incarceration, that kind of a thing. Wilkerson spent too many years on his own and unaccounted for, for cold case detectives to believe he might not have killed somewhere else. The questions are, where and who? In 2003, at a desk inside the El Cajon Police Department, Detective Robert Anderson tackles the job of reconstructing a man's life. The detective is creating a detailed timeline of Clyde Wilkerson's movements,

and then attempting to match up the former trucker's whereabouts with unsolved crimes. One morning, Anderson zeroes in on the place Wilkerson called home from 1973 through 1975, Tulsa, Oklahoma. One day I sat down on the internet and I started playing around putting in you know unsolved homicides and unsolved rapes and eventually I got the Tulsa PD internet website.

You could research either by name or by year and I started doing by year and I put in 1973, 1974, 1975. Under the year 1975, Anderson comes across the description of four unsolved homicides. The detective calls down to Tulsa for more information on the cases. One of them immediately jumps to the top of the list as a perfect fit for Clyde Wilkerson's M.O. Her name was Geraldine Martin.

On February 5th, 1975, she attended an evening lecture at Tulsa Community College. After class, she walked through a darkened parking lot toward her car. The next morning, her car was still parked in the lot, and Martin was missing. Her body was found two days later. Martin had been raped and strangled. To Anderson's eye, the murder fits Clyde Wilkerson's pattern of attack. He asks Tulsa if they have any evidence that could be used for DNA testing. They had already DNA'd it. It was a very high profile case. And so I asked that he have his lab person contact Connie Milton,

and they could compare the numbers over the phone. They did the very next day. The next day, Anderson gets a phone call. His hunch about Tulsa is correct. The DNA is a match to Wilkerson. That one made the hair on my neck stand up. It was a totally different feeling than what I had with Burnett and Mercer because this one just really took me. It was a totally

different case and it was a shot in the case of Geraldine Martin. Meanwhile, Robert Anderson has returned to his computer, refining his timeline, working the internet, and looking for more bodies he can lay at the doorstep of Carl Wilkerson. I'm positive there's more out there. He worked for two trucking companies from about 96 through March of 2000, and that's a good four-year time frame. When you're traveling around as a truck driver, a long-haul truck driver, and you have access to every state and all the people that are out there hitchhiking and who actually

live on the road, the potential for other victims is enormous. Cold Case Files is hosted by Marissa Pinson, produced by Jeff DeRay, and distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at anetv.com. Pluto TV is TV the way it should be, free. With over 300 channels, Curtis. Check out more cold case files at anetv.com. Movies like Braveheart, Sonic the Hedgehog, Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgundy, or Mean Girls won't cost you a thing because everything is free.

All you have to do is download the app, which, by the way, is also free. Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.