Cold Case Files - DNA SPEAKS: Fought Like Hell

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

When the blood-smeared car of 27-year-old Stefanie Watson is found in a Maryland parking lot, her family holds out hope she's still alive. When part of her remains are found in a neighborhood, the missing persons investigation becomes a hunt for a murderer. Greenlight: Get your first month FREE when you go to Greenlight.com/coldcase Money Crimes: New Episodes of Money Crimes release every Thursday! Progressive: Progressive.com  ZocDoc: Check out Zocdoc.com/CCF and download the Zocdoc app for free! 

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 Podcast, 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 program contains disturbing accounts of violence and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. It's summer 1982 in Laurel, Maryland, a Washington, D.C. suburb. And 25-year-old Stephanie Watson is looking for a fresh start. She's recently divorced and planning a move to Texas.

This is Peg Adams, Stephanie Watson's sister. Stephanie started working at the local hospital in Laurel, and she worked in the emergency department. She was packed to go to Texas, and then she was going to go to work one last night and then meet her cousin Chris and go on a little vacation for the weekend to Ocean City, Maryland. By 10 a.m., Stephanie's cousin Chris is packed and ready to hit the beach.

But Stephanie doesn't show. Chris waits for an hour, then calls Stephanie. There's no answer. By noon, Chris knows something's wrong. My cousin Chris called me and said, I can't find Steph. Have you heard from her? And I said, no, I haven't heard from her. There was panic in Chris's voice. This is not like her.

Sergeant Richard Fulginitti, formerly of the Prince George's County Police Department, recalls the events of that morning. My cousin became very concerned. She went ahead and she called a friend and even jumped in her car to check on Stephanie. She made her way into the house and Stephanie and her car were nowhere to be found. When I got the call from Chris, it was like I was paralyzed from the moment I heard that Stephanie was missing. All of a sudden at, you know, level 10 on my anxiety and we all, you know, started praying. They became concerned, and they called the Laurel City Police Department. Richard Friend is a local historian.

Laurel in 1982 was a typical small town. There's a main street in the heart of town, and you can pretty much travel the entire area in about 15 minutes. Laurel was small enough that people knew each other, but big enough it was starting to get developed and malls were being put in. You would hear about, you know, car break-ins, that sort of thing, or assaults, but certainly nothing like this. Stephanie was born on July 3 of 1955. We were seven years apart, and her crib was in my bedroom.

You know, when she'd cry, I'd wake up and I'd worry about her. I would jump in and play with her. It was just sweet, sweet times. She was a very compassionate girl. She cared about people and their feelings. Anyone that came in to the ER on her shift would see her, and she really thrived on helping people there. Stephanie was a very likable person. She would sit on a chair out in Milan in front of her apartment complex and talk to people as

they walked by. And having a big Siberian Husky that she would walk at all hours. Stephanie got Keto when she was married to Wayne, but it was her dog. He was a beautiful, loving, furry thing. He was Stephanie's companion. Stephanie always had lots of friends around her. She was just such a social person. Stephanie lived in the Washington, D.C. area for quite a while, but it was in the Beltsville area that she had met her husband, Wayne. The marriage doesn't last.

Wayne and Stephanie split up in 1980, less than two years after their wedding day. Wayne was prone to losing his temper and doing something violent to her. Stephanie never talked to me about the abuse, but my mom told me all the stories that Stephanie had shared with her. And Stephanie said, I'm not going to live with an abusive person. Two years after her divorce and her move to Laurel, Stephanie makes plans for a bigger move to Texas to be closer to her extended family.

I started kind of begging her to move down to that area as well. And she said, I might do that. She said, I'll look for a job this next week. So we were just thrilled. And I just thought that was so exciting that I would have my sister there. With Stephanie missing, those plans are on hold. First thing they're going to look for is something that's out of place. that I would have my sister there. With Stephanie missing, those plans are on hold. First thing they're going to look for is something that's out of place.

Overturned dresser drawers or there had been a struggle and there's a broken glass or a broken dish. Everything was neat as a pin. Her clothes were folded and ready to put in a suitcase that was laying on her bed. Yet a detail about her beloved husky strikes police as odd. Her dog was there. She would at least have food for the dog, water for the dog. There was none, so that's why they knew something was awry. Investigators questioned Stephanie's friends, looking to establish a timeline.

A co-worker saw her at a bank drive-thru that afternoon, probably cashing her paycheck. There was talk about some of the people from the hospital getting together with Stephanie as a goodbye and going to a particular bar. The investigators talked with the people at that bar, and they came to the conclusion she never went there that night. They checked with her employer and found that she never showed up for work,

which was very unusual. We know that she left her home around 8 p.m. because we spoke to a neighbor who looked out of his window and he saw Stephanie pulling away from her apartment. That was the last sighting of Stephanie that we're aware of from anyone. And at that juncture, they went ahead and they filed the missing persons report and put a lookout for her vehicle. Stephanie was driving a late 1970s Chevy Chevette. It was a tan in color, very small car, hatchback.

Everyone was looking for that car. Laurel was considered a tight-knit community. It was important to get the information out. So they created a poster that had Stephanie's picture on it. It had a description of her vehicle. The missing persons flyer of Stephanie Watson was prevalent throughout Laurel. Whether it was a store, a restaurant, the bowling alley, you really couldn't go anywhere without seeing that. People in Laurel responded by the hundreds to go around in the woods and the fields and try to find her. Everyone was on high alert. People had suspected the worst, and then it really felt like this is more than just a missing person now. And we stayed at Stephanie's apartment, and it became the meeting place for pastors and friends and relatives. There was such a

supportive response from people. We just said they're gonna find her and we'll know. It's now July 27th, four days after Stephanie's disappearance. Stephanie's gone and she's with her car. So in this case, they put an immediate broadcast to be on the lookout for her car. A uniformed officer was actually off duty at the time, drove by and recognized the Chevy Chevette sitting in a parking lot. It was right across the street from Laurel Center Mall. It was parked in a residential parking lot of apartments. There was no attempt to hide it at all. It was like front and center facing the street. The officers found that the tires on the Chevette were covered in mud, and that was an indication that vehicle was somewhere else other than this cement parking

lot. The car was left unlocked, and when the officer opened the door, what he saw was mayhem. Wes Adams is the former chief state's attorney in Prince George's County. This was a missing person at the time, even though there were signs of violence. As you're looking at it, you know that this was a struggle. The discovery of Stephanie Watson's missing car gives detectives their first big break in the case. There was blood all over the driver's seat. There was blood to the rear. There were fingernail clippings,

fake and real fingernails within the car. The amount of blood that was in the car was an indication that some violent confrontation took place. Police were very skeptical at that time that they were going to find Stephanie in good shape. My mother, my father, my baby, and me, we stayed in Stephanie's apartment

when my father would just say, she'll be home soon, so we're not going anywhere. And so we stayed there about a week. The police came and told us that they had recovered Stephanie's car in a parking lot of a high-rise apartment building in Laurel. And my mom and dad were still trying to keep a brave face. I asked them, the amount of blood you saw in Stephanie's car, do you believe that she is now dead?" And they said,

yes we do. And I thanked them for that realistic view because it kind of gave me a strength to deal with my mom and dad and their wishful thinking. They said whoever she was attacked by has marks on him. There's no way he escaped without being scratched pretty bad. So we said, did you talk to Wayne? Her ex-husband obviously was at the top of the list. Stephanie had basically moved to Laurel as a fresh start to get away from him. Wayne was abusive to her. And one time, he picked up Stephanie and threw her at the couch and broke the couch and hurt her back. It had to have been some force that threw her

against the couch to break the couch. I mean, he never called us or anything to say it wasn't me or anything like that. My mom had a feeling that Wayne's girlfriend had done something. She beat down her door one night because she thought Wayne had visited Stephanie. And so she was outside Stephanie's door, banging on the door and screaming Wayne's name.

The girlfriend had threatened Stephanie, so police certainly wanted to speak with both of them. The police went back to Wayne's apartment. He came to the door with just shorts on, and his chest was clear, no marks on his face. So they kind of ruled him out, knowing the struggle that she put up to protect herself. And then they talked to his girlfriend, and there weren't any scratches on her. And that was incredulous to us.

We thought it had to be those two people. With their two most promising suspects cleared, detectives are back to square one. I just longed for them to find something. When you look at the car, it was clearly about a struggle. But there still existed the possibility that she was alive, that she was abducted. It's now August 1st, eight days after Stephanie's disappearance. Desperate for a lead, detectives re-interview Stephanie's neighbors,

looking for anything they might have missed the first time. What the investigators will do in a case like this is they'll start in a tight group and they'll work their way out. James Long was a neighbor of Stephanie's. He was outside playing basketball. Stephanie was outside sitting in her chair and they struck up a conversation. James Long had been with her on at least a couple of occasions. Another neighbor said she had seen James in Stephanie's apartment, sitting on the sofa, watching TV. James Long wanted to see her socially,

and she had told him that she was just getting divorced. She said, I don't want to get in a relationship right now. I'm not interested. Police wanted to speak with James Long because he was rejected in this relationship, and maybe he was looking for a way to be closer to Stephanie than she was willing to allow him. Police questioned Long for hours, but in the end, they conclude he's not involved in Stephanie's disappearance. There were only so many people they could interview that knew Stephanie. So they were grasping at straws. They were hoping that, you know, the phone would ring

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Sign up for Greenlight today at greenlight.com slash coldcase. That's greenlight.com slash coldcase to try Greenlight today. greenlight.com slash coldcase. Some say financial crime is victimless, but that definitely isn't the case, especially when it ends in murder. You need to check out Money Crimes, a new show hosted by bestselling author and entrepreneur Nicole Lappin. Money Crimes is about the world's biggest financial scandals and how they can spiral

out of control in ways you'd never expect. From cunning Ponzi schemes to cutthroat politics and even murderous con artists, you'll learn that the finance world is more dangerous than you ever imagined, and most importantly, how to protect yourself from it. Money Crimes is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes release every Thursday. Just search for Money Crimes. That's M-O-N-E-Y-C-R-I-M-E-S. On September 2nd, six weeks after Stephanie's disappearance, James McEvers witnesses some strange activity on his walk home from school. In 1982, I was 17 in my last year of high school. I was coming home from school and I saw a car coming down the opposite side of the road.

He lives on a dead-end street, and he saw a green Ford LTD. I see the car make the U-turn area, and this man is out of the driver's side, opens the door behind him, reaches in. Mr. McEvers kind of crouched down behind his car so that he wasn't seen. He wasn't sure whether there was a passenger in the car, but he thought there may have been. He watches the man walk out of the car, walk over to the tree line, and drop something. It just seemed too weird to me. It was all off. Everything was off about it.

I decided I have to check this out. I need to see for myself what it is that he just tossed in the woods. I'm looking through the area. I see something immediately that caught my eye. So I decided to approach it a little closer. It's a very wooded area, very grassy. So I'm looking through this, and I kind of just saw something, and I tapped it over. And what he saw were teeth.

I found a skull, and it was definitely human. I'm shocked. I really am. I didn't want to touch it any further. I knew something was up. The police department received a telephone call about the possible human remains being discarded in a field over in Laurel. When the police arrived, they found the remains. It was a lower mandible, and the teeth were fully there. It's the left side of her skull, and it's held together by a piece of skin.

The remains were approximately four to five miles away from where Stephanie lived. These items were sent to the medical examiner's office in Baltimore, Maryland. Using her dental records, a forensic odontologist can compare the previous x-rays with the actual evidence that we have. So we were able to make a positive identification of Stephanie Watson.

There were news reports of sex trafficking and kidnapping all the time, and we were thinking, maybe, maybe, maybe she's still alive, maybe. It was always that wonder. My parents were traveling back from Texas, and they couldn't get my parents, so I was the one that was called. When the police told me, they'd found her partial skeletal remains. It was like, this is another world. And I asked them what they had,

and they said, do you really want to know? And I said, yes, tell me. And they said, we have a lower jaw and a back part of her skull with hair. And that's all we have. And I was in shock. I said, how could you find that and not anything else? My parents returned home late Saturday night and I had been told about the recovery on Friday. And I had to sit with that until I could talk to them Saturday night. And I said, they have found partial skeletal remains of Stephanie and they know that she's dead. Once Stephanie's remains were identified,

the case then becomes a homicide and then was transferred from Laurel City Police to the Prince George's County Police Department. James McEvers gives investigators a detailed description of the man he spotted disposing of Stephanie's remains. I told the police he was basically a white male, might have been 30 to 35. Mr. McEvers told police that the driver was about 5'10 to 6'. He was medium build, said he had a little pouch belly. He also tells police about the unusual car he saw that day. And I knew immediately it was a Ford LTD Hunter green with a lighter green on the top. So he went with the sketch artist and the police did a composite drawing based on what Mr. McEvers said he saw.

Investigators plastered the area with a sketch and vehicle description. You know, we didn't have the social media that we do today. So what police did was get these sketches and hang them up. And so they were hung in the local shopping centers and the barber shop and the dry cleaners for people to look at when they did their shopping. The sketch leads to a flood of new leads. There were tips that came in to police about Stephanie being at multiple locations. Someone would say, I left a restaurant and I think I saw that car in the parking lot, those type of things. Sometimes they're far-fetched, but you have to follow up on every lead.

It's that one lead you don't follow up on that may be the one you need. As months pass, investigators follow every conceivable lead, but nothing pans out. From time to time, investigators in the cold case unit would get a telephone call from a family member, and you pick the case up. And you try to see what leads that you could potentially garner from that and go out and re-interview people if they're still around, visit sites, do different things. Police actually got calls where people were relaying information about serial murderers.

And hey, this matches a serial murderer by the name of this and that. And so police actually started to dabble with the fact that someone could have been in their area. One particular call to the tip line catches detectives' attention. Police got a tip that some serial killers, Henry Lucas and Otis Toole, had been through the state of Maryland during that time period. They were road mates, you know, just travel around the country. Henry Lee Lucas had ties to Maryland. And both of these guys were free around that time in 82.

He was driving a Ford LTD. And James McEver said that he had seen two people in this car. Otis Toole was charged with Adam Walsh's murder. And I thought, well, that's interesting, because that was a kid who was murdered, and the head was cut off. Henry Lee Lucas was known to target women and had confessed to several killings.

According to reports, he had killed his own mother. They had been arrested. They were in Texas. confessed to several killings. According to reports, he had killed his own mother. They had been arrested. They were in Texas. And they were questioned as to where they were and where their crime sprees led them. And so they even went to the extent, once Stephanie was located, they went and conducted an interview. Penrealee Lucas was confessing to hundreds, if not thousands, of murders. The M.O. was certainly there it was chilling that was the moment when i thought you know this could be this could be who's responsible for it the tips that investigators received on the serial murders got them a little excited so they flew to texas

and they went and interviewed these people lucas and tool had kidnapped and a variety of other things throughout the south during those years. And I understand there was a car that was also similar to what I saw. They met with some of the agents that had been conducting the interviews with Lucas and Toole, and they were able to go ahead and find out that they were not in Maryland at this time, and it was confirmed that they were not. So that was a dead end. There were only so many people they could interview that knew Stephanie,

and most of those were cleared. So they were grasping at straws. As 1983 draws to a close, the case of the murdered ER nurse goes cold. My parents always were troubled by never knowing what happened to her. I mean, she was their baby and they were very, very changed by her death. There weren't as many smiles on their faces. There weren't as many lighthearted conversations. I'm saddened. Stephanie's parents didn't live long enough. They get that justice. They never lose that heartbreak. After taking over the cold case unit in 2012,

Detective Fulgonitti learns of promising advances in DNA technology. Initially, all we had was blood typing. That's all we were able to get from that car. We knew that there were two separate and distinct people in that car that bled. We assumed Stephanie was one, and we assumed that her murderer was the other. At least a couple of years had passed, and speaking with our evidence technicians, they said, you know, things have advanced. The sensitivity of the tests had greatly increased. It's now April 2013, 30 years and nine months after Stephanie's murder. Detective Rick Fulginitti is approaching retirement age. By the time science catches up with the Stephanie Watson case, he checks on the status of the crucial crime scene evidence that has been kept in storage all these years. The biggest thing about Stephanie's case is we had one glaring giant car seat

in our property warehouse. I wanted to have it tested again. And the last time that it had been viewed, it started to grow moss. It was there for so long. So the bloodstains were hard to even discern from moss. Guy suited up and went into the laboratory with him. And we looked at the photographs

and went to certain areas of the seat, and we tested multiple locations. We got a stain from the back left corner of the bottom seat, portion of the driver's seat, swabs from the left door. We took those samples, sent them off to the laboratory. We were hoping that we could make some type of link between a family member.

So we contacted Peg and said, could we get a swab, a DNA swab of her mouth? We had to take a sample from her sister and match through sibling or through mitochondrial DNA. And that's how we were able to confirm that the blood in the car was Stephanie's. And that was an important piece of evidence for us to be able to say that we had both Stephanie's blood, scientifically, and the defendant's blood in Stephanie's car. DNA gets uploaded into our CODIS system to see if there are any other known profiles that would be consistent with the DNA that we just raised. I was convinced because there was so much blood on this seat that it was a good candidate.

The fact that a piece of evidence from 30 years ago still remained, that it needed to be tested. Now was the time. It was approximately two and a half to three months later. I received a telephone call from our crime lab, and they said that they'd like to see me in their office. And I had no idea why. The test results have finally come in and it's good news. The DNA found in the blood on the car seat matches a profile found in CODIS. The police officer called

me and told me that they had found a DNA hit. He said, we know who killed your sister. I was very surprised and happy that we had a hit. We had something we could sink our teeth into. It was a great feeling. Being an adult has its benefits. You can eat ice cream anytime you want or stay up late every night watching old 80s movies. But it's not all fun. You also have to do your taxes and figure out what's for dinner every night

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and join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company & Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. The CODIS DNA match leads detectives to 68-year-old John Ernest Walsh. Wade Zufall is a detective with the Howard County Police Department. John Walsh was in the Army during the Vietnam War. In 1963, he was transferred out to Frankfurt, Germany, where he worked there several years as a dental hygienist.

Several young females that he had distributed fluoride to started filing complaints of sexual assault against him. He received an undesirable discharge in 1964 from the United States Army. In November of 1969, John Walsh and his friend decided they were going to drive around and locate the first white woman that they could find and abduct her and rape her. They took her into the woods and sexually assaulted the victim, and they cut her throat with a knife. They thought that they had killed that woman, but she was able to testify against John Walsh in 1970 in the trial. He was sentenced to 72 years. He went to a facility called Patuxent Institute, more of a halfway house of prisons.

And after 10 years of being there, he was actually paroled. I don't know how Mr. Walsh was handpicked for rehabilitation. I would have argued that based on his actions, he should never be released. It's disheartening to learn that someone who would have committed such a heinous crime against another human being would be out walking the streets. John Walsh was paroled from 1980 until 1989, until he failed a drug test in 1989 and was sent back to prison.

Thankfully, he was put back again to serve out his full sentence. By 2013, Walsh had spent more than 20 years in prison. It was a fantastic feeling to finally have this case in a position where we knew who committed the crime. That was so impressive to me. It seemed like they all got emotionally determined they were going to be the one that found him. We still have to go ahead and try to get a confession out of them and to find out if there are remains that, you know,

possibly we could return to the family. I heard from the police several times, and they said they were watching, anticipating, bringing the charges against him. Because we get the DNA hit, we then have the probable cause to get a search warrant for his DNA today so that we can match the results to John Walsh's DNA that we took in person.

So I applied for and received a search warrant for his DNA and I responded to the Eastern Correctional Institution to conduct a DNA test and to an attempted interview. I got into the Eastern Correctional Institute and found John Walsh sitting in a wheelchair. He looked like a decrepit old man. He was much older than I expected. I knew his age, but I guess the life of crime

and imprisonment had aged him. We introduced ourselves. I told him why we were there. He was smart enough to not say that he did it. He wanted to see what we had against him. He confirmed that he owned a green Ford LTD, said he sold it for $800. I told Walsh that his blood was found on a crime scene, and we got your DNA inside of her vehicle. In this particular case, we had a

lot of photographs. And I said, it all related to this girl, and I showed him the picture, and you're going to be charged with murder. Aaron Myers is a former homicide prosecutor for the Prince George's County State's Attorney. At that point, Walsh used his finger and kind of tapped the photograph and said, pretty girl. So it was kind of creepy. You know, the thing that I would use that for

is it's an inference. It's an idea that, you know, and the defendant obviously was interested in this woman. I knew what this guy's history was. I knew for the majority of his time, he was somebody who preyed on young, attractive women. A crime scene investigator had just taken a course dealing with blood spatter.

So the lead detective and I, we accumulated all of the crime scene photos and we gave it to this crime scene investigator and i said to her we're not going to tell you what happened here but you look at all these photos and you come up with your theory as to what happened in this car i think he wants to talk i think he wants to talk. I think he wants to tell us. I think he is incredibly curious as to what we have on him. And I think this presents an opportunity. And I said to Mr. Walsh, please just

allow Miss Miller to tell you what she thinks happened. She started going through the crime scene photos, explaining this is where this happened, this is where this happened, based on the drips, the puddling, the smears. After she was done, Mr. Walsh commented, well, that's not exactly what happened. He couldn't help himself. He had to talk about it.

He had to. In July 2013, 31 years after Stephanie Watson's murder, with his DNA linked to the murder, detectives have Walsh backed into a corner. He tries talking his way out of it. He told a story about this nice young lady. He sat in her car and out of the clear blue sky, someone came up and started stabbing him with a knife in that vehicle while he was sitting there. And we asked him why he didn't call the police. And he said, oh, I didn't want to get involved. And he said, I went on my own way. He says, so I have no idea what happened to Stephanie Watson. When I started to hear his story of just simply being in the car, the first thing I thought was we got him.

Still, a conviction is far from certain. This was a case from 1982 and most of the evidence was gone. We were stuck with what we had. There was a lot of uncertainty that a skilled defense attorney would try to build into reasonable doubt. So detectives put together a confirmation DNA search warrant to ensure that it actually was Mr. Walsh and then go out and create a charging document. Investigators take a DNA sample directly from John Walsh and compare it to the DNA found in the blood on the car seat. We had all the evidence we needed.

The DNA that came back was so conclusive in the quadrillions. I really didn't have any apprehensions that this would go forward. On June 21, 2013, Walsh is charged with the first-degree murder of Stephanie Watson. It was a relief to know that they had found the guy, that they had told him he was being indicted, and that they would communicate with me about the trial. In these cases, no matter what the evidence is, the pressure is unbearable. You are the face of justice.

How am I going to prove this? How am I going to present this to a jury? There is no such thing as a slam dunk when it comes to a trial. You may think that you have a premeditated, first degree murder 100%. A jury might not think that way. Even though he is getting some justice,

our family never got justice. Because true justice would have brought her back to us alive, unscathed. That would have been true justice. And we don't get that in this world. Walsh takes a deal and pleads guilty to second-degree murder. The combination of the DNA hit as well as his statements. Putting himself in that car and just the absurdity of those statements, that is what led to the plea.

In this particular case, it wasn't a perfect result because that's a first-degree murder in every sense of the word, what he did to Stephanie Watson. But having the matter resolved and getting that answer was a positive result for Stephanie's family. It was decided that because he was willing to take a plea, there would be just a hearing. I was living in California at that time,

and I did not want to feel the feelings I might feel seeing him. I just wasn't prepared to do that to myself. But Chris said she was going and her dad was going with her. They wanted to see him. They wanted to know who this guy was that changed all of our lives. Stephanie's cousin invited me to sit with the family at the sentencing hearing. Walsh comes ambling in in his blue jumpsuit. You would never suspect that this was somebody years ago or any time capable of what he did.

It's now March 28, 2016, in Upper Marlborough, Maryland, 33 years after Stephanie's murder. A judge sentences the 71-year-old to 33 years in prison with no parole. This plea agreement resulted in ensuring that Mr. Walsh would end his life inside of a jail. Walsh never says why he killed Stephanie, but he does tell police what happened that night back in 1982. According to John Walsh, he went to a small bar to have a few drinks after work, and Stephanie Watson was there.

They figured she went out to get something to eat before going to work. And that's where John Ernest Walsh happened to spot her. They struck up a conversation. He walked out to the vehicle with her, and he attacked her on the driver's side of the vehicle with a small knife. God bless her. Stephanie grabbed that knife and stabbed him in the nose, causing a huge gash,

and he ended up bleeding inside of that vehicle. He actually drove her vehicle to the Laurel, Maryland area, and it's that point that he killed her with the knife that he had. At that time, he started to make arrangements to remove her body and place it in other areas. 32-year-old cases rarely get solved. And so when they do happen, it is a cause for a celebration. People need to know that they're not forgotten. I often think about how brave Stephanie was to grab that knife off the dashboard and stab

John Walsh in the nose. She's a hero for every victim out there, and she did everything that she could to fight her way out of there. We talk about her often. It had changed me and my family so much. She was 27. We had her a short period of time compared to what we've had to live without her.

It's been 40 years since Stephanie disappeared, but it seems like 40 minutes in my heart. Cold Case Files is hosted by Marissa Pinson, produced by Jeff DeRay, and distributed by Podcast One. The 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 a place for movie fans, like me.

And TV fans, like me. They've got something for everyone, and it's free. I love free, and I love Jersey Shore. For me, it's the Godfather. SpongeBob SquarePants. I am Patrick. Patrick is me. Oh, Forrest Gump, come on.

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