Cold Case Files - Baby For Sale / The Barrel

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

When a Nevada couple demands the return of a baby they had sold to another couple, the burned body of the baby turns up in Arizona. Then, a man discovers a barrel in his crawlspace that contains the body of a woman who has been dead for decades.This Episode is sponsored by BetterHelpBetterHelp: Visit BetterHelp.com/COLDCASE to get 10% off your first month.Homes.com: We’ve done your homework.Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.Rosetta Stone: Cold Case Files listeners can get Rosetta Stone’s lifetime membership for 50% off when you go to RosettaStone.com/coldcaseSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, Cold Case listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson. And if you're enjoying this show, I just want to remind you that episodes of Cold Case Files, as well as the A&E Classic Podcasts, I Survived, American Justice, and City Confidential, are all available ad-free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation Channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now on to the show. This episode contains stories involving violence against children. Listener discretion is advised. He had asked us if it was a girl, if we would take her, if we would take her and raise her as our own. I started getting phone calls and, you know, Lillian wants a baby back. She changed her mind and I said, well, that's not an option anymore. All I remember of that night were Jimbo's words. If you don't give her back to Lillian, you'll know what it's like to lose one of your own. He'd put the baby on the phone, and I just hear her screaming and crying and crying, you know, calling Mama, Mama, Mama.

This was an upper middle class Long Island neighborhood where the homes were luxury homes. There's no crime. That's why everybody wants to come and leave out here. Toward the rear, there is a 22 by 24 foot crawl space. He crawled all the way to the back of the crawl space. He saw the barrel. They sure what appeared to be a human hand and a foot. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories.

It's October 9, 1990 in Orm Ranch, Arizona. Alan Kessler is a rancher responsible for 600 head of cattle on a 26,000-acre ranch. In 1990, his son, J.B. is five years old. About an hour into their day, Alan Kessler's horse pulls up before a shallow ravine. Alan looks down and notices a dark object lying among the rocks. I just assumed it was a doll.

It had been burned. It was black and was kind of shiny. And it was sitting up there. And, but my son said, there's a baby, daddy. J.B. is now 20 years old. She's laying on a little ledge of rock, with her head kind of facing us. There was still some kind of shreds of clothes on her. It's not rational. It doesn't make sense.

Why would you come across a burned baby? I mean, we see some strange things out here sometimes, but you just don't see burned babies laying around. Alan and J.B. call the local authorities. Yavapai County Sheriff's investigative. Ernie Cox and Frank Valentine respond to the ranch. I see a charred body of a little infant that may be a year and a half, two years old. It has his hand up in the air, and it's like looking up into heaven. You think that maybe the baby was alive trying to cry, trying to ask for some help or something.

Cox and Valentine noticed the crime scene is located near a freeway turnoff, a popular stopping point for passing motorists. It was popular to dump trash for some of the locals, illegal dumps. So we started looking for tire tracks, footprints, anything that would give us a clue as who'd come and go on. Valentine locates a set of tire tracks and the impression of a cowboy boot, still fresh in the Arizona clay. The vehicle pulled in a stop. You can see where it stopped.

Somebody stepped out of the passenger side of the vehicle, wearing a large cowboy boot. Valentine believes the owner of the footprint to be the killer. To begin searching for the boot print's owner, investigators start by examining the corpse of the child. Dr. Philip Keane is the medical examiner for Yavapai County. In 1990, he conducts roughly 70 autopsies, very few involving the murder of an infant. Keene looks for any identifying features. We were able to establish that this was a female, that it was Anglo. And we estimated this child was anywhere from 10 months up to maybe a year and a half or two years of age.

Investigators tell Keene they are especially interested in putting a name to their victim. Keen, however, offers little in the way of hope. Visual is not reliable. Fingerprints are reliable, but they are not kept on file for people under the age of eight in the state of Arizona. dental records are fine, but they're not very good in children who are still in the process of erupting teeth through the gums. Keen takes an inked impression of the infant's feet for his vials and draws blood for a possible DNA comparison sometime in the future.

He determines that the child was burned post-mortem. Unsure of how the victim was killed, Keen marks the case of death as an undetermined homicide and completes his autopsy with more questions than answers. Your mind has to rush to all the possibilities of who is this child? Why is this child abandoned in the high desert as it was? And what is the story that is behind this child's demise? Keane labels the victim Baby Jane Doe and sends a copy of his medical report to investigators

and hopes for someone to provide some answers. Inside a small office, investigators Valentine and Cox cull through piles of missing persons reports, looking for their baby Jane Doe. You can't have a child that's a year and a half old that's suddenly missing from a family without explanation. It's just, you know, it's something that it's going to turn up. Medical reports are circulated and a composite sketch of the child is developed, generating plenty of leads, but little in the way of real information. We had leads from all over the place. None of them panned out. But that's kind of

the price you pay. That's what you get when you put out a shotgun information, try to get as much as you can. One of those could. You just never know. You get upset and trying to figure out, where do we go? There's somebody out there knows something, and we need to make contact with them somehow and get them to tell us any little thing so that we can go on further and find out who this child is and who's the responsible party of their death. Two months after she was first found in a ravine, baby Jane Doe remains unidentified. Her body is buried at a local cemetery, and the investigation into her case goes cold. Four years later, Herardo Vasquez is 38 years old, an amateur boxer and a social worker in Tulare County, California. In the summer of 1994,

Vasquez also finds himself in a relationship with a woman who has a burden she needs to share. She mentioned that she knew of a murder that had taken place. And I go, who did the killing, you know? And she said, my brother-in-law. And then she quieted down again, and I could see her tensing up. Determined to learn more, Vasquez presses his girlfriend for information. I asked her, who did he kill? And that's when she said, his baby.

And immediately I said, you know, we're going to have to tell somebody. Over the next 18 months, Vasquez talks with his girlfriend. wearing down her resolve and gathering more information. Her brother-in-law's name is James Meagan. According to Vasquez's girlfriend, Megan and his wife, Lillian, tried to sell their child for adoption in Las Vegas. By January of 1996, Vaskis feels like he has gotten

all the information he can and is ready to go to police. I knew that I was starting on a difficult journey and that there was no script for this journey. I didn't know what the outcome was going to. going to be. All I knew is what the next thing was, what I was going to have to do. I was going to have to report it, and I was going to have to let the cards fall where they do. I felt like I didn't have a choice. On January 11, 1996, Sergeant Ken Hefner of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department receives a call. We get information like that quite often. We get calls almost on a daily basis,

people wanting to report homicides, sometimes with very vague information on very old situations. According to Vasquez, James and Lillian Meagan tried to sell their daughter for adoption in 1990. When the scheme turned sour, the Meagans took their daughter back and allegedly killed her. Armed with this information, Hefner runs a background check on the family. I did some research. I saw that there was a child, a female child named Francine, born to them at the right time frame. Heffner follows the paper trail to the Bureau of Vital Statistics, where he finds no evidence of Francine Meagin's death. Then Hafner polls the local school district, looking for evidence she ever attended grammar school.

Francine was not in school. She was born. She should be in school. She isn't in school. We can't authenticate that she had died in some proper or reported way. At this point, because we know that the child was actually born and never made it to school years later when it became school age, We have serious concerns that the story's going to pan out to be true. Detective Tom Thousin works the case with Hefner. He unearths adoption papers for a Francine Megan filed six years earlier. The family seeking custody of the girl was an Orange County couple named Dennis and Valerie Jensen. On January 22nd, Detective Thousand finds Valerie Jensen living and working in Southern California.

He greets Jensen at her job, asking pointed questions. about the Meagans and their child Francine, an infant Valerie Jensen knows as Danielle. I'll tell you, that's the weirdest feeling when you have homicide detectives coming to your work, wanting to see you. First thing that they asked me was, when was the last time that I saw Danielle?

As detectives listen, Valerie Jensen takes them back seven years to the day she got a phone call from her good friends, James and Lily and Megan, with an unusual proposal. It's Jimbo or James, and he was saying, you know, Lillian's going to have a baby. And he had asked us if it was a girl,

if we would take her, if we would take her and raise her as our own. As unconventional as James's offer was, Valerie took delight in the possibility of adding a baby girl to her family of five. We couldn't have any more kids at the time. and we were going to, we were a family of boys. I wanted a daughter.

I did. And this was just the too good to be true type situation. Seven months later, Valerie Jensen got a second call. This time, it was Lillian Meaghan on the other end of the line. I answered the phone and she says, come pick up your daughter. Okay. You're kidding. No, come pick up your daughter.

He's waiting for you. Valerie tells police she and her husband, and traveled to Las Vegas, where they found James and Lily and Meaghan living in a motel room far removed from the bright lights of the city. It wasn't like the nicest place. It was sad. The baby was laying on a bed by herself, and I picked her up, and she was just, that was it. It was over.

I knew that she was going to go home with us. According to Valerie, the Jensen struck a deal with James and Lily and Meagin. In exchange for custody of baby Francine, they agreed to help the meagans get back on their feet financially. Valerie wrote a check for $1,000 and made arrangements to purchase a car and home for the meagans. The Jensen's then headed back to California with a new addition to their family. A newborn baby girl renamed Danielle Nicole Jensen. She was the little princess around the house. I just loved to be around her brothers and got so excited when she'd see her.

dad and she was just something else. She was definitely a blessing. For three months, the custody arrangement worked fine. Then, what seemed to be a blessing turned into a nightmare. It began with calls from Lillian Meekin, asking questions about the child. It started getting kind of tense. Constant communication with Lillian and, you know, placing demands and all of a sudden, And now you're going to try and start telling me how to raise this child. And that wasn't what I was going to do. According to Valerie, James then began to call. At first, he was polite, then insistent.

Lillian wanted her baby back, and money was the only thing that could keep her quiet. So basically, what they were saying is, we need money, and Lillian's changing her mind. But if you send us some money, I can talk Lillian out of changing her mind. The Jensen's refused to pay any more money to the meagans. Four weeks later, in the middle of the night, they got a knock at their front door. There stands Lillian, and Lillian comes in, and she says, I came to pick up my baby. I want my baby. And I said, no, no.

And all I remember of that night were Jimbo's words, if you don't give her back to Lillian. You'll know what it's like to lose one of your own. Openly afraid of her former friends, Valerie Jensen handed over Danielle. It was the last time she would ever see her. But not the last time she would hear her. As Valerie explains to Detective Thousand, she heard Danielle's voice at least one more time, on the phone in September of 1990.

Jimbo would call and he'd put the baby on the phone and I just hear her screaming and crying and crying, you know, calling Mom. Mama, mama, mama. And he just was irate. She won't shut up. All she does is cry. Investigators digest Valerie Jensen's story and believe it,

leading them to an inescapable conclusion. Unable to wring any more money out of the adoption scheme and stuck with a daughter he did not want, James Megan took the short way out and killed his own child. But without a body, how do cold case detectives prove it? They decided to visit James Meagan and bring a picture of his daughter. He virtually just recoiled from the picture. Anybody reading that body language would say, you know, something's wrong here.

I wanted to try something new this summer, so it hasn't just been about road trips and little weekend getaways. I also decided to shake things up and third learning Spanish again with Rosetta Stone. And let me tell you, sneaking in a lesson. by the pool or while I'm having coffee in the morning, feels way better than scrolling my phone. It actually feels like time well spent. Rosetta Stone has been the trusted leader in language learning for over 30 years, and now I get why. The way it works is so intuitive. You just start absorbing the language without constantly translating in your head.

And the true accent speech recognition feature, it's like having a coach making sure I don't sound like a total tourist. I was surprised by how quickly I started picking up real sentences instead of just random words. I'm keeping it up because I want to feel more confident when I travel, not just ordering food, but actually having conversations that feel genuine. And honestly, I think that's what makes Rosetta Stone different. You don't just learn the language, you feel it. So if you're looking for a meaningful way to use your downtime this summer, whether you're traveling or just hanging at home, give Rosetta Stone a try. With their lifetime membership, you can learn all 25 languages whenever you want. Seriously,

leave scrolling behind for a bit and start your own summer of discovery with Rosetta Stone today. Don't wait, unlock your language learning potential now. Coldcase files listeners can grab Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. That's unlimited access to 25 language courses for life. Visit rosettastone.com slash coldcase to get started and claim your 50% off today. Don't miss out, go to rosettastone.com slash cold case and start learning today. Homes.com knows that when it comes to home shopping, it's never just about the house or condo. It's about the home.

And what makes a home is more than just the house or property. It's the location and neighborhood. If you have kids, it's also schools, nearby parks, and transportation options. That's why Homes.com goes above and beyond to bring home shoppers the in-depth information they need to find the right home. And when I say in-depth, I'm talking deep. Each listing features comprehensive information about the neighborhood complete with a video guide. They also have details about local schools with test scores, state rankings, and student-to-teacher ratio. They even have an agent directory with the sales history of each agent.

So when it comes to finding a home, not just a house, this is everything you need to know all in one place. Homes.com. We've done your homework. We're standing across the street from 4480, Ella Oro, which was the house the Megan family was living in at the time that this investigation came to fruition. On February 13th, detectives Ken Heffner, and Tom Bousen, ask Lillian Meaghan if she and her husband have a moment to talk. Lillian's demeanor was immediate and profound. She just began to slump, drop her shoulders, drop her head. It looked like the weight of the world had just crashed down upon her.

When you walk into the Meagan household, you have a full understanding that James Meagan rules with an iron fist. The first thing that you see hanging on the wall between the living room and the kitchen is a very well, worn thick leather belt that is so worn in that it hangs perfectly flat on both sides around the nail. Detectives questioned James and Lillian Meagans separately about their daughter Francine, who the Meagans allegedly sold to an Orange County couple in 1989, and who investigators now believe has been murdered. Lillian tells detectives her daughter has been missing for more than six years, and that

she was kidnapped out of a parking lot of a local casino. leaves the baby in the car while she goes inside to cash a check, and when she comes out, the baby's gone. And when they ask her why she didn't report this to the police, she just tries to explain that she was worried about these scrutiny and never told the police. The story is completely unbelievable that she would have her child taken from her vehicle at a casino

and not report to anybody. Lillian's story might be unbelievable, but it is more than what James Meagan offers police when asked about his daughter. He couldn't give you an answer to anything. He'd refer us back to Lillian, which would make no sense if you had a child and it was stolen out of a car and your wife was the one that had it when it happened, certainly you'd have a conversation with her at some point where you'd know every detail about it.

Then Ken Heftner takes out a photo of Francine and puts it on the table in front of her father. He turned sharply to his right. It was so fearful of looking back and seeing that photo. We knew then anybody reading that body language would say, you know, something's wrong here. Something is indeed wrong, but without a body or some idea of what might have happened to Francine Megan, cold case detectives are forced to wait. We believe that the child is dead. We believe that this has happened, that James has killed this child and done something with the body. And we're going to keep a surveillance on the

house to see what's going on with James Megan and see what he does next. What James Meaghan does next is try to leave town. In the early morning hours of February 14, 1996, a surveillance team tracks the meagans heading out of Las Vegas. We ended up stopping the megan's as they're about to head out of town, which I'm sure just was another situation to them that just shocked them back in reality. You're not going anywhere. You're not going to slip out in the early morning hours and drift away,

and this thing's going to just be forgotten. Detectives have enough to hold James Meagin on a charge of murder, but not nearly enough to support a conviction. Cold case detectives decide to reach out to the public. And we're looking for the help of people who knew the meagans, who may have lived next door to the meagans, who may have heard what they may have said on this issue to come forward and help us. It doesn't take long before neighbors and friends of the meagans line up to offer detectives any information that may help the case. According to Marcel Pete, a friend of James Meagan, he and Megan had a conversation that turned into a confession to murder. In some kind of car accident, his leg was messed up, and he was on medication for the pain, and the baby was crying, and the next thing he knew, he grabbed it and shook it.

Before he realized what happened, it was over. He didn't know what to do. He was scared. That was huge. I mean, that's kind of evidence that is very damning when your best friend comes forward. And you can tell the man took no great pleasure in telling us what he knew, but it was the truth and he was going to get it out. Pete's information advances the case against James Meagan significantly. Cold case detectives, however, realize they're still missing a significant piece of the story.

If Megan killed his daughter, what did he do with the body? And where is it now? Meanwhile, in Prescott, Arizona, schoolteacher Jackie Price sits down with her husband, Dennis, and reads the newspaper over breakfast. On the second page of the Prescott Courier, a little story caught my eye that said that a man had been arrested and was in jail, but they couldn't find the body of his daughter that was missing. Jackie remembers reading about the body of a baby found burned in the Arizona desert six years earlier. Price shares details of the news article with her husband, Dennis, who happens to work at the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office. My wife said, you know, that's your baby. I know that's your baby. And I kind of said, what? And she said, the baby you guys found. You know, this, I'm sure that that is the baby. And I said, you know, I don't think so. You know, what are the odds? Like that, no, you're wrong. This, this is really connected. I felt very, very strongly about that.

Jackie's husband agrees to put a call into the Las Vegas Police Department. DNA later confirms what Jackie Price already knows that Francine Meaghan is indeed baby Jane Doe. Nothing in this job shocks me anymore. Surprise, yeah. We were pleasantly surprised that the information got out and we had our body. Cold case detectives believe James Meagin to be their killer and decide to confront his wife Lillian.

Faced with the evidence of Francine's remains, Lillian is willing to talk about how her daughter died. According to Lillian, her husband James brought an almost lifeless Francine to her arms, claiming that the child had gotten into some pain medication James had been taking for his broken leg. Lillian said she tried to do CPR and the baby basically dies in her arms.

They decide at that point they're going to take the baby out of the house so she puts the baby in some clothes and puts the baby inside a suitcase, puts the suitcase in their car. Lillian says that they then traveled to Arizona, looking for a spot to dump the body of their one-year-old. Just off I-17, the couple found a turnout and pulled over.

James takes Francine out of the suitcase, puts her on the ground, pours gasoline on her, and sets her on fire. And I remember Lillian commenting that she couldn't watch, so she didn't want to look and ask that they drive away and they didn't stay to watch to make sure that the body burned up. Cold case detectives don't believe Lillian's story of an accidental overdose, believing it to be a last, desperate attempt to save her husband from a charge of murder. Clearly, if he admitted that he picked up the baby and shook it,

he'd be admitting to murdering the child as opposed to just having some medication that the child gotten into, which she was trying to do at that point. On August 20th, a jury renders its judgment on how Francine needs. Meagan died and who was responsible. Her father, James, is convicted on a single count of first-degree murder and is sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Francine's mother, Lillian, pleads guilty to negligence and receives a sentence of 18 years. The Meaghan's former friend, Valerie Jensen, who once called Francine, her daughter, laments the senseless loss of an innocent child. She wasn't given a chance. You know, she deserved to be loved.

and to grow up and to be with her family. And they took that from her for absolutely no reason. On the afternoon of September 2, 1999, in the township of Jericho, Long Island, real estate agent Peter Coconos heads to the home of a client. He has asked Coconos to help dispose of a client. a 55-gallon drum, one that has rested in the crawl space of the client's home since before he moved in, nine years earlier. When he purchased it, he saw the drum and, you know, he tried to move it, but he couldn't

lift it. So he rolled it back and he left it, and I guess he looked out all about it. Coconos and the homeowner decide to see what's inside. They get a screwdriver and pry open the sealed lid. I mean, we got a little surprised because I looked inside. There was another drum upside down, which it was deteriorating. It was corroding. And then we started smelling, an awful smell. Not entirely sure of what they have discovered, the men closed the lid and called the police.

Within minutes, Nassau County Police arrive and confirm there is a human body inside the barrel. Detective Sergeant Robert Edwards and Detective Brian Pardt. Harpan are called to the scene. When we got here, the barrel was almost directly in front of this tree. It was on the street. It was almost directly in front of the tree where they had left it for the garbage. We sealed the drum up, called the medical examiner's office, made the notifications we had to make to move the drum into the medical examiner's office for a further inspection and autopsy.

On the morning of September 3rd, Dr. Gerard Katnese begins the process of extracting the body from the metal drum. After draining off a green industrial liquid and removing thousands of small plastic pellets, Katnese finally gets to the human remains. She was a female. She was of a young age. We'd felt 20 to 30 the day of the autopsy.

She was other white or Hispanic. We weren't sure. These were the first things that we picked up. Katnese x-rays the body and discovers that the victim was nearly nine months pregnant at the time of her death. A death caused by blood.

blunt force trauma to the skull. The barrel's airtight seal has completely mummified the remains, making fingerprint identification impossible. The victim's dated clothing, however, suggests her death occurred not months, but years earlier. The first clues came when we started to see the personal effects and some of the items look like they had dated back to the 60s. Alongside the body, Catanese finds a small purse. Inside it is an address book, the detective's best chance of identifying their victim. Now, nothing in there was readable at the time. You have to understand that both the pocketbook, the address book, was saturated not only

in her own body fluids, but also in this green liquid. Detective Parpan hands the address book off to Detective Joan Fertner, a forensic document examiner. When paper gets wet, it becomes very fragile. And so I was very delicate with it, and I couldn't really manipulate. manipulated or opened the paper too much because I didn't want to cause any damage. Fertner places the address book in a drying cabinet, hoping as moisture leaves the pages that the victim's handwriting will emerge.

And then I ended up taking a very flexible, small plastic ruler with rounded edges, and I use that to try to separate the pages in the address book. While the examiner tries to coax a clue from the book, detectives Parpan and Edwards dig into the history of the house where the body was found, identifying four different owners in the past 30 years. One owner in particular catches Detective Parpan's eye. And then as we were interviewing and going back through the owners of the home, we were told that Howard Elkins had been involved in a plastic flower company. Howard Elkins owned the house from 1959 through 1972. Elkins worked in plastics manufacturing, a profession that fits well with a

contents of the barrel. Parpan and Edwards trace numbers printed on the barrel to a defunct company, which in the 1970s frequently sold barrels to Elkins Plastics Factory. Didn't take a real rocket scientist thing up with the fact we had to talk to him. Cold case detectives trace Howard Elkins to Hallandale Beach, Florida, where a former partner of Elkins, Mel Gantman, gives them their first hint as to the identity of their woman in the barrel. She had that long hair and she had that exotic look, you know. She came from the islands and very, very attractive. She would get a second look.

According to Gantman, the barrel comes from a plant he once operated with Howard Elkins. Colt case detectives asked Gantman if he has any idea how a young pregnant woman might have wound up inside the barrel and under Elkins' former Long Island home. Gantman tells detectives the company used to manufacture plastic plastic. flowers using young immigrant women as line workers. One of them, Gantman claims, became involved with Elkins. It did indicate that he was aware that at one time, Howard Elkins had had an affair.

And we asked him if he could describe the girl. She had that long hair and she had that exotic look. She came from the islands and very, very attractive. She would get a second look. It was somewhat eerie because she said she was a very attractive, very small. She had long black hair. And this, of course, is exactly what we were looking at from the body that was recovered from the barrel. Gantman isn't able to provide detectives with the girl's name.

But his information does fill in the blanks as to why she was probably killed. Well, one of the prime movers in homicides is a married guy who has his girlfriend pregnant. Here we have a pregnant woman, you know. This is likely the boyfriend. She's dead. She winds up under his house. I mean, that was certainly the scenario that we were looking at. While Parpan and Edwards endeavor to establish a motive,

their partners back in New York work on IDing the victim. A job that eventually finds its way to the Nassau County Crime Lab. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Okay, I have to say, lately it feels like the internet is drowning us in wellness advice. One day it's cold plunges. The next, it's screen detoxes, and then it's three different morning routines you're supposed to follow. Honestly, I've gone down those rabbit holes before, bookmarking a million self-care tips, only to feel more overwhelmed than I was when I started. It's exhausting trying to figure out what actually works for you. That's why therapy is such a different

experience. Instead of getting lost in all the noise, you're talking to a real professional who helps you sort through it, making sense of your thoughts, giving you tools that actually fit your life. For me, therapy has been more about learning coping skills and setting boundaries than anything dramatic, and that's been life-changing on its own. BetterHelp makes it so much easier to access that kind of support. They're the world's largest online therapy platform with over 30,000 licensed therapists and more than 5 million people served globally. You can connect at the click of a button, switch therapists anytime, and sessions are just as convenient as opening your laptop or phone. And they work. Sessions average a 4.9 out of 5 rating from over

1.7 million reviews. So if you've been wanting to prioritize your mental health, but you're tired of the endless trial and error advice cycle, BetterHelp is the place to start. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash coldcase. That's BetterH-H-E-L-P.com slash cold case. Cold Case Files is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home

and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance company and affiliates, potential savings will vary, not available in all states. After drawing out the pages of the address book, Forensic Document Examiner Joan Furtner sees some faint writing has become visible, but is not yet readable. I brought it down to my examination room and used a video spectral comparator, the VSC 2000, and that allowed me to look through the infrared and ultraviolet ranges of the spectrum outside of the range of the eye can normally see.

Fertner scans each piece of script and begins to decipher what she believes to be the victim's handwriting. On one side of the page, it said Social Security number, which was written down, and on the opposite page, it said Residencia Nombre. It was a resident alien number, and that was listed on the other side. And when I saw that, I just said, wow. The resident alien number leads police to immigration, and then to a name and photograph of the woman they believe to be their victim.

She is Raina Marroquine. Raina was 25 years old in 1966 when she immigrated to New York from El Salvador. Armed with this final piece of information, detectives decide it's time to talk to Howard Elkins about his old girlfriend. At 4 p.m., detectives Parpan and Edwards knock on Elkins' front. door in Boca Raton, Florida, and sit down for a chat. But he disavowed any knowledge whatsoever of anything to do with it. The items that we had just been convinced by Mr. Gantman, the barrel, for example, he indicated that, no, they never had a barrel like that.

Parpan asks Elkins if he ever dated a worker at his factory. And he told us that he did have an affair, but he couldn't even describe the girl. We asked him if he'd ever put her up anywhere or if she was pregnant and, of course, his answers they were no. Detective's Parpan and Edwards believe Elkins is lying and hope to use science to prove it. They want to compare Elkins' genetic signature to DNA extracted from the unborn fetus found inside Rain American. If Elkins can be determined to be the unborn child's father, the case against him seems

certain. When asked to provide a sample for testing, however, Elkins refuses and asks, detectives to leave. I said, well, we'll be back, and we're going to have a court order. We're going to take a sample of your blood, and they're going to match it up to the blood and that dead baby and that dead woman, and we're going to put you in jail for the rest of your life. You understand that, Mr. Elkin. And he just nodded his head, and we left the house.

The next day, Parpan and Edwards began processing paperwork to obtain blood samples when a call comes in from the Nassau County Detective Bureau. One of the detectives in the office asked me if we had Mr. Elkins in our custody. I said, of course not. Why? He said that the police department from Florida had just called our homicide squad, indicating that Mrs. Elkins was making him a missing person. By the time Parpan and Edwards arrive at the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, Mr. Elkins has been found. Earlier in the day, the 70-year-old walked into a Walmart store, purchased a 12-gauge shotgun and a box of shells. He then got into the backseat of a neighbor's SUV and fired one shot

into his skull. He didn't face this the last time, and I don't think he was going to face it this time. I guess that he felt was his only way out. Post-mortem DNA testing establishes Elkins to be the father of Raina Merrikeen's unborn child. He was the father of the fetus, and that I felt gave us the motive. He had the opportunity, and that really closed the case for us. Detective Joan Fertner adds a final piece of evidence found folded in the back of Merroquine's address book. I took the sheet of plastic and put it over and then traced the image from the screen. And when I read the image, the words on it said, don't be mad, I told the truth. With that cryptic message, the tangled love affair between Elkins and Merroquin comes to a close.

Book ended by the murder of mother and unborn child. But who was Rain American? 30 years later, New York reporter Oscar Corral is searching the small towns of El Salvador for the Marroquine family. Newsday made the decision to send me down to El Salvador to try to track down the family on a wild goose chase after 30 years. And it took us a couple days, but we eventually found them. Corral locates the home of Raina's mother, 94-year-old Ercilia Marroquine. It falls to the reporter to fill in the family on what happened 30 years prior. Breaking the news to them was like breaking the news to somebody whose family member has been killed the day before.

I mean, it was that fresh in their minds. It was that fresh of a wound in their hearts. They wanted to put this behind them. They wanted to know what happened to Rena, and they found out. The following month, 30 years after she died, the remains of Raine-American and her unborn baby are returned to Rana's family and find a final resting place in her hometown of San Martin El Salvador. Just when you thought summer couldn't get any hotter, Pluto TV is turning up the heat with thousands of free movies.

Presenting Summer of Cinema. Stream your favorite blockbuster films like Gladiator. I will have my vineyards. Good Burger. This is what I call fast feet. Beverly Hills Cop, the girl with a dragon tattoo, and Julie and Julia. Bonapete. All for free on your favorite devices.

Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.