Cold Case Files - NCIS / Exhuming The Past

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

After U.S. Navy sailor Andrew Muns disappears in 1968, the Navy claims that Muns went AWOL from his ship. But his sister works tirelessly for over 30 years to prove that Muns was really killed. And DNA surreptitiously gathered from a cigarette butt helps detectives to unravel a 20-year-old case of rape and murder.Angi - Download the free Angi too today or visit Angi.comApartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.Mint: To get the new customer offer and your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to Mintmobile.com/coldcaseProgressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.Quince: Go to Quince.com/coldcase for free shipping on your order and 365-day returnsShopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at Shopify.com/coldcase and take your retail business to the next level today!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. 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. Well, we're going to go up the hill to my brother's gravesite. It's always hard to find it because there's so many. It's 2006 in Arlington National Cemetery,

and Mary Lou Taylor walks past Roe after a row of headstones. Each marks the resting place of an American hero. In at least one case, the headstone memorializes a murder victim. This is it. In memory of Andrew L. Munn's, Ensign, U.S. Navy, Vietnam, October 12, 1943, January 17, 1968.

Andrew Munn's was Mary Lou's brother. He was serving on a Navy ship in the Philippines, when he disappeared without a trace. Well, from 1968 to 2000, we had no answers whatsoever. We just had a lot of suspicions and questions. The cold case of Andrew Munn's dates back to 1968 and the height of the Vietnam War. Well, in January 1968, I was assigned as a special agent

with the Naval Investigative Service at Subic Bay. And my boss gave me a call and told me that, that he needed me aboard the USS Kakapon. In the winter of 1968, a refueling vessel named the Kakapon, docks in the Philippines. There's trouble aboard, as Special Agent Ray McGady of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service quickly learns. He gave me a three by five card, basically telling me that they are missing dispersing officer and missing funds from the dispersing office safe.

Ensign Andrew Munn's is the man who hands out pay aboard the Kakapon. He was last seen alive above deck heading to his office. It's one of the first places that we went in order to determine what the office looked like and also to take a look to see at the safe that was available. Munz was last seen around 2 a.m. At 8 a.m., he failed to report for muster. Later that morning, another sailor noticed the ship's safe open and $8,600 was discovered missing. Brought some suspicion as to what happened to the 80s.

$600 that was in the safe at that time. Was he a victim of foul play or did he take the money and run? On shore, Agent McGady ducks into local bars with a picture of his missing man. No one has seen him. Then McGady checks with embassies throughout Southeast Asia. We checked through Hong Kong. We checked through Kaohsiung in Taipei. We checked manila. We checked everywhere we could possibly believed that he could be and were unsuccessful. We couldn't find him. My mother opened a letter one afternoon that said, we're sorry to say this, but your son's missing.

We knew immediately that something bad had happened to him and that he wasn't going to come back. Because we knew Andy, and we knew he would never would have left that ship on his own. He never would have deserted. That was totally against his character. So for us, it was more a matter of trying to get the Navy to believe that something bad really happened

him that he didn't leave the ship voluntarily. Agent McGady seriously considers the idea that Munn's might be a victim of foul play. His suspicion grows after a talk with Munn's direct subordinate, a sailor named Michael Lebrun. I do know that during the interview there were some things in the interview that didn't feel right. He suggested that Ensign Munn's might have gone scuba diving and was gone for that reason. reason. It did seem ridiculous that Ensign Munns, in the middle of the night, would go scuba diving. First of all, it would be unsafe. Secondly, he couldn't see anything. And it seemed like it was

probably some excuse to offer an explanation for him not being aboard the ship. Ray McGady believes Andrew Munn's might very well have been murdered. The U.S. Navy's official line, however, states something different. He was officially labeled a deserter. There was an FBI form, a deser document, sent to the FBI and to all the police in New Jersey and Pennsylvania where he lived. So they were actually looking for him in regards to a larceny. Mun's status as a deserter is devastating to his family, especially Mary Lou's father. That kind of stress really did him in, and he died three years later.

died three years after that, at the age of 57, with no record of heart disease or anything, he had a massive heart attack. That probably is the hardest thing for me to swallow it, is that this man died, believing that his son was wrongly accused and that no one had shown otherwise. Years go by, and Mary Lou hears nothing further from the Navy. Everywhere she looks, however, she sees reminders of her missing brother. At that point, Vietnam was such a major part of American life. In all of the airports, there were servicemen all over the place.

And for years, I would kind of comb the faces of all the servicemen in the airports when I'd travel back and forth to college looking, you know, could one of these people be Andy? Is it a possibility that he's still alive? Mary Lou never catches another glimpse of her brother's face, and the mystery of his disappearance fades into memory. I was in the office in May of 1998. I was very much part of the Cold Case Homicide Program and received this telephone call from

a lady by the name of Mary Lou Taylor. She introduced herself over the phone and explained to me that her brother, Andrew Munns, who was in Ensign in the Navy in 1968, disappeared off the USS Cacapon. Pete Hughes is an NCIS agent. Thirty years after Ensign Andrew Munns disappeared off the USS Cacapon, Hughes takes a meeting with Munn's sister, Mary Lou, who refuses to forget. In some ways, I think that the not-knowing and the deser status was harder than losing him. If it had been, yes, he was killed in action, or yes, this person killed him on the ship,

and we knew it, we could have gotten on with things. And the question you asked is, why should we investigate the murder of your brother? And so you let me talk for 45 minutes. I told you every reason why I thought we should investigate. And I was really, it meant a lot to me that you would let me talk, that you actually were listening to every detail. I remember you sharing with me how you had started your own investigation in this. And to me, that just rings so true of somebody who's yearning for the truth.

I needed to know what happened to Andy, and I needed to clear his name. And we finally, we decided as a family that we had never been able to really grieve for Andy because there was never a body. There was never admission that he was dead by any, you know, by the Navy. Given his status as a deserter, Andy Munn's family was not given a flag at the Ensign's memorial service, an indignity that has stuck with Mary Lou throughout the years. I can't tell you how angry I was at that moment, thinking that I couldn't get a flag for Andy's service. So I said, you know, I'm not that old. I got a lot of energy in me and

I'm going to get a flag. It may take me years, but I will get a flag for Andy. So that became my passion was that flag was a great symbol to me of Andy's honor. And so that's when the flag became important because I thought he deserved a flag at his memorial service. I just felt compelled that I felt an obligation after having spoken with you to get a copy of the case files. There were a couple people who jumped off the pages that said, look at me. There were unresolved issues.

There were questions about what they were saying. And I knew that we would need to go back and revisit those folks. At the top of the list is a sailor named Michael Lebrun. LeBron worked for Munns in the ship's dispersing office. LeBron came up with a strange explanation when Munn's turned up missing. He suggested to that disperse an officer that, well, maybe Andy Munns had gone scuba diving

during the night and had gone alone and maybe had drowned, which I thought was fairly bizarre, because who's going to go scuba diving between midnight and 7 o'clock in the morning in Subic Bay, the Philippines? The officer's response to that was, I know Andy Munn's, Andy Munn's is not going to go scuba diving alone. So that was one red flag. The NCIS agents believe LeBron's 1968 statement is bizarre enough to warrant another interview. In 1999, they catch up with the former seamen in the middle of the Great Plains.

Well, the first time around, the approach with LeBron first time around, it's very informal, very relaxed. Michael LeBron is now working real estate in Kansas. Agent Hughes approaches LeBron as though he's aware. witness in Mun's disappearance, and he agrees to come to a local police department. We would ask him, take yourself back in time, Michael. Take yourself back to 1968. Just relax, close your eyes and tell us what you see. Before long, Lebrun describes his role in Mun's disappearance, one in which Lebrun is stealing money from the ship's safe. His eyes are half open, half closed, and he's saying, I see myself. All of a sudden, he goes, well,

I think I hear something. I think somebody's coming in the door. And during this time frame, I'm stuffing money down my shirt. And in comes Andy Munns, who I thought was secured for the night. And he's saying, I can see Andy Munn's confronting me. Hey, you're stealing that money. I'm going to put you on report. LeBron is talking in hypotheticals, saying maybe it happened this way.

I hit him. He hits me. Maybe that's what happens. That's what he would say. That's what we would. we were dealing with. He goes, I can't remember that. He goes, but I'm taking myself in time. I can see that happening. But I don't know that happened because I don't remember that happening. Pete and I have done hundreds of interrogations together. And whenever somebody starts this,

I don't remember, I don't remember, it's possible. You've got your guy. So he was playing these, what I call the cat and mouse games. But clearly he's good for this homicide. We just don't know how he did it. I mean, when Pete comes back with the information, We had a roundtable strategy session. We reviewed it. What we decided to do, and Pete ultimately said, agreed to, was we're not going to play the game the way LeBron wants us to play the game. NCIS agents decide they are going to force the action. Over the next year, they learn everything they can about LeBron to then apply pressure to him.

I'm really eager to see what the old office looks like where we set it up. Remember the pressure, though, of actually bringing LeBron in here and knowing this is it, we that get this, are the kids. case is over. In the fall of 2000, NCIS agents bring LeBron in for questioning. The strategy is risky, either secure a confession or drop the case against LeBron. I just remember all the pictures on the walls. You know, and then that flip chart here. The interrogation room is filled with poster-sized pictures of Michael Lebrun and his

shipmates from the U.S. Kakapon. When he walked into this room, he knew we had done our homework. Because everything, his whole life was out. When he walks in, he pans the room, looks at all these pictures on the wall, sits down, sees how we've methodically placed these files. Pretty overwhelming. He's open the door and he looked around the room,

he goes, this is my life. NCIS agents get to work almost immediately. All right, I know you're responsible for insulin. Yeah, I know that. We can show that. The only issue is, is that it happened in a split sequence and that you planned out. So premeditation, premeditation, or was it spontaneous?

That's the one question. Quite frankly, I think it's premeditation. If the crime was spontaneous, LeBron can only be charged with manslaughter, which has a five-year statute of limitations. That has long since expired. LeBron seized the loophole and is quick to try and crawl through it. There's a statute of limitations regarding spontaneous act. I thought there was no statute of limitations on homicide. It depends on how the act was completed.

Part of our strategy when Michael LeBron was, look, if it's manslaughter, you can't be charged because the statute of limitation has run five years. And you know what? You get up and you walk out of here today. Or it's a premeditated murder. And if you plan to killing, there's no statute of limitations and you can be prosecuted. I'd like to think that you didn't plan this out. I'd absolutely like to think that.

But you know what? There's indications to me that you might have. But you're a pretty selfish, cold SOB. I could see the wheels in his brain moving. If it was an accident, if it was something less than premeditation, then that statute of limitations right. You can see his brain working. Or did you plan it?

Did you plan it three weeks in advance? Did you plan up two minutes in advance? If so, you can be charged. LeBron is beginning to believe he can at nimbled. to killing Andy Munns and walk away a free man. And I never meant to kill Andy Munn's. Just saying, come on, let's put it into it. We're so long.

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homeowners who have used Angie to care for their homes. Download the free Angie app today or visit Angie.com. That's A-N-G-I-com. I never intended to kill anybody. I never have planned to kill anybody. I've never premeditated to kill anybody. But it happened within any minds. Isn't that right? In an interrogation room, a 55-year-old former Navy sailor named Michael LeBron

is about to confess to murder. And if you be man enough and stamp up with complaint and say, you know what, guys were spontaneous, we're on the phone going, we have a problem, sexual limitations. It's positive. You won't be prosecuted. Am I hearing that I won't be prosecuted? As you see about 15 or 18 minutes into the interrogation,

he started listening and he started shaking his head, yes, and he understood what we were saying, and started to make a little bit sense to him, and he started to figure out, you know what, these guys have got me. That was my perception. They got me, and my only way out is to admit to a manslaughter. I'm here to tell you there was no premeditation. All right.

All right. It was spontaneous. Okay. Well, once LeBron thought he wasn't going to be prosecuted because he committed what he perceived was a manslaughter, he decided to go ahead and confess. My killing Andy Munn's was not intentional. There was no intent on my part to kill him. I don't recall the exact time that I killed him.

Tell us why you kill him. Again, tell us what we already know. Self-preservation. Do I protect myself from being caught? Being caught. Being caught. Being caught, you know, messing and the safe. Andy Munn saw him do that.

And Andy Munn said, okay, I've got you. You're on report. And that's when that intent of premeditation came in right then. It only takes seconds to form intent. And that's when he knew he had to kill him or go to the brig. And that's what he told us. Safe doors open. Now this is premeditated.

I mean, I see it all of a sudden it's a safe door open. It's kind of like, oh, yeah, I opened the safe. NCIS agents understand that the issue of premeditation will be key to their case. They ask LeBron to stand up and reenact the moment of murder. Hey, what are you doing? Oh, shit, that's that. And I just, show him how you grab in place. How do you grab him?

What does he do? He grabs back. Where do I grab you? I'm going to just grab. I'm going to just kind of like, we can't know, you can't. No, you can't. I can't do this. I can't see this. You can't tell anybody.

Boom. Boom. Boom. No, this can't happen. Leave me alone. I can't have this. Whatever. I don't recall exactly what I'm saying. I'm just panicked. He's struggling. He's kicking. What stops him from doing that? I'm stronger than he is.

Right. What am I going to do? My first thought was I got to get rid of his body, throw it over the side. the side. I went out to the foot in the well deck. It must be a splash. It'll float.

I'm deep shit here. I got this. What am I going to do? Tank. Remember we muck tanks. We muck tanks when I was on night. What does that mean muck tanks? Oh, we went down and cleaned them out.

They never go in these tanks for a year and a half. And then he had to figure out what to do with the body and what to do with the money. Why throw away $8,600? Why not just keep it? Well, LeBron, already starting to figure out how. starting to figure out how I need to cover this crime. I was thinking about latent impressions. Hey, my fingerprints are on this money.

I need to get rid of this money. LeBron tells agents he panicked and dumped the money, along with Munn's body into the ship's muck tank, where it was later flushed out to sea. After he confesses to the NCIS agents, Mary Lou Taylor, Andy Munn's sister, is brought in. There's some truths that I've had to face here just even today. And I've come to realize that I was responsible for Andy's death.

And I'm sorry to you for that. It was awkward for me because it felt like I was supposed to say, there, there, that's okay. But it's not okay. He killed my brother. And so just confessing isn't okay. It's something that I haven't even been willing to face for the last 30-some years. And I don't know what else to say.

I'm so sorry. It was hard to say, oh yeah, I understand. I didn't understand. He killed my brother because he was stealing money and he got caught. I don't understand that. I'm glad to be able to lay this to rest. Oh, God. I'm glad it's for you and it's partially made to rest for me, but it's not done yet.

At the end, when we were leaving and he said, may I give you a hug? I don't forget his exact words, but it was something like, can I hug you or may I give you a hug? I was totally taken aback and I certainly wasn't ready to say, oh, sure. I'm sorry. Can I give you a hug? Is that okay? No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'll say that's fine. I'm going to get. Cold case agents do not immediately arrest their suspect. Instead, Michael LeBron goes home, thinking perhaps that he's gotten away with murder. He believed that he could only be charged with a manslaughter charge.

I'm convinced that he thought that he was going to get a pass on this. Matt Whitworth is a deputy U.S. attorney in Kansas City. In the fall of 2000, he reviews Michael LeBron's taped confession and concludes he could be prosecuted, not for manslaughter, but for felony murder. There are, however, some problems. My first concern that I had was I knew that they had, you know, inflated or misled him and concerning the amount of evidence they had that implicated him in the crime. I know you're responsible for instant loans.

Yeah, I know that. We can show that. Did we push the envelope a little bit in there? Sure. I mean, this is a murder. We're talking to somebody we strongly suspect committed a murder. Whitworth suspects the confession might be vulnerable to a motion of suppression at trial and tells NCIS to prepare for a legal fight over the tape.

It's a fight the prosecutor is willing to take on. You never yelled at him. You never had your guns out or there were no weapons present. There was never any physical force or threats. Told him he was going to go home several times. And we took him home. And he went home. As a prosecutor, if I had agents in an interview lying

about what the law was, then I would take a, you know, I don't think I'd file a case because there's a fairness issue there that I would have to take into consideration. But that wasn't the case here. They didn't mislead them, him about what? what the law was. In March of 2001, Michael LeBron is charged with felony murder,

and his defense moves to suppress his confession. The district judge rules in LeBron's favor, so the jury will not hear his statement. The following year, a federal appeals court affirms the lower court's decision. I thought we were done. And then you call back and you say, there's this process called en banc.

You said, I feel like you guys push the envelope, but you did not cross the line. And you stayed within the limits and we're going to take a shot at him. On Bonk is an appellate hearing before the entire Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Five years after Michael LeBron's confession, the circuit court hears the case. We got to argue the case in front of the full court in bank and we won this time, 7 to 4. And that was a great day and we finally got that decision. You know, in all honesty, and I've told Pete and Jim this that, you know, I was,

I wish I would have had a little bit more input on how the interview was conducted before it happened. We always felt somehow things were going to turn out right. Yep. Things were going to turn out okay. Why? Because we knew we didn't violate his rights. Well, hey, listen, next time you have one of these cases out here, though, wouldn't you call me first?

We promised. We had a lot of critics in this case, and all I can say to the critics, God forbid, that any of them ever lose a loved one the way Mary Lou Taylor and her family did, I can guarantee you they'll want us to do the same thing we did in this case. And I'll just pull out all the stops. Get down to it, get hard, get gritty, get dirty, but get to the truth. I was there and I believe that those officers did or those agents did everything they could possibly do to do a legal and honorable and ethical confess.

It's hard to get somebody to confess after 30 years. They couldn't just say, well, did you do it? In the fall of 2005, Michael LeBron pleads guilty to voluntary manslaughter into sentenced to four years in prison. I was just pleased that we were able to get justice for Mary Lou Taylor and her family. And I just remember how pleased they were that we finally won. Here's this picture right here, Andy Munn's. That's what it's all about.

That's what it's all about. For Andy Munn's family, the final chapter plays out at Arlington National Cemetery, with a memorial service for Ensign Andrew Munn's and a flag for his family. The ceremony itself was one of those perfect days, it was sunny, warm Washington Day, and the K-on with the horses and the Navy band, and an admiral at the head of the Honor Guard. It was just, it was absolutely what Andy deserved.

It was perfect. I have gotten to really love and know Pete and Jim, and in a way I got two brothers when I lost just one. And so it was a real gift for me. This whole process has been a gift, because I feel like they cared so much about Andy and about his honor that they're part of my family. On August 17, 1981, I'd been a Carvindale police officer for one week.

That's the same day that Susan Shoemate was murdered. Susan and I had a class in one of the buildings behind me here. In 1981, Sergeant Paul Eccles is 21 years old. The rape and murder of a local student named Susan Shoemake marks his second week on the job. I actually was in the police training at one week. I got hired one week to the day before she was murdered.

It was a scary thing. It was the first time ever that I'm aware of that an SIU student was murdered on campus. Her murder shook the campus and little I know that 23 years later I would arrest her killer. One of her friends called me up there

to tell me that they couldn't find Sue. I knew that they felt something wasn't right. John Shoemaker is Susan's older brother. On August 18th, he gets a call. His sister is missing from the campus of Southern Illinois University. She was supposed to meet a friend for a... They were going to have dinner together, and she didn't show up, and that's when they knew something was amiss.

As John Shoemake and his parents drive to Carbondale, a campus-wide search for Susan. is underway. I kept trying to reassure them and tell them, oh, she's with a friend. Don't worry about it. I'm sure she's okay. And I don't know at what point I stopped believing that. Well, this is known as Thompson Woods.

There's foot paths and trails that have been through here for years. Some of them lighted, some of them not. And it was common for students to cut through when traveling across campus. Hank Bannocky is a student police officer for the university. one of a half dozen who scout the area. Obviously, you can see that it's a lot of undergrowth, so that is what we were asked to do to start just walking the footpaths and searching through the woods as best we could.

Just before midnight, searchers discover Susan's body, off a campus shortcut called the Ho Chi Men Trail. Cause of death was strangulation. Now, there was no ligature marks, so you're probably talking manual strangulation. Frank Cooper is a crime scene tech with the illicit. Illinois State Police. He's called out to the Ho Chi-Men Trail and the body of Susan Shoemake.

After we turned her over, then she had obvious injuries to her face. She had a cut lip, bruises on her face, so she had been hit hard and hit several times. The guy that did this was an animal. That's all you could say about him. At autopsy, the medical examiner determines Susan was raped and seaman is collected. Her body is released for burial, and Susan's family is left only with a feeling of devastation. I'll never forget that night. It was just, it was awful.

You know, just realizing that she had been murdered was, it was just impossible. And I was just crying and, you know, what else could I do? Once Ms. Shoemaker was found and the circumstances surrounding her death were known, the community was obviously alarmed and the police wanted to solve it as quickly as possible. So the police used all their resources to try and solve this. One name surfaces as an immediate suspect. A man named John Paul Phillips has already served time for kidnapping and is considered a suspect in two local deaths.

What's more, police can actually place him on campus at the time of the disappearance. Larry Hill is a detective from the Carbondale Police Station. department. It was determined that John Paul Phillips was working right here at the women, what we call the women's gym, but again, they were doing some repair work on it, and it turned out that he was working here, very near proximity of where the body was found down the way a little so that right there put him in the neighborhood and was just one more indicator of maybe he was the right person. Phillips is questioned and his interview only heightened suspicions. There were some things that were learned during the interview that made him look still even more viable as a suspect, some odd scratches on him and some, you know, wishy-washy alibi and so on and so forth.

And so the detectives gave him a good hard look. Phillips, however, is not the only name on police radar. As a new evidence places a second suspect, even closer to the crime scene, Lolle McGee is a detective for the Southern Illinois University Police Department. This is the evidence room of the Selinaw University Police Department. This is where Daniel Willisson's tote bag was stored after it was recovered. Days after Susan Shoemaker was murdered, just blocks from the crime scene. A bag was found containing prescription drugs, but not the kind issued at your local drugstore. The prescription was filled at the Menard Crackson Institution in Chester, Illinois.

And that caused a red flag to come up. The name on the prescription bottles is Daniel Wollison, a paroled convict who was working less than a mile from the murder site. Wollison moves to the top of the suspect list for Detective McGee. This is the King's Inn. Looks like it's pretty well abandoned now. Detective Hopkins now came here to contact Daniel Wollison, and we were going to talk to him, really, about the murder he'd been committed on the campus. he was smoking heavy. He wouldn't make eye contact when we talked to him.

He just seemed to be nervous. The fact, you could see he was visibly shaken. Wollison claims he is innocent. Detectives leave, but return to the King's Inn the next day. Wollison, however, is gone. In a wastebasket, Detective McGee finds the remnants of a letter. I don't understand why it's always me. I know I can't handle prison.

again so I know everyone is better off this way. My only regret is hurting my family. If my brother wants anything that I've got, that's who I want to have it. He signs a note, sorry, Dan. McGee believes Wollison to be his killer. Two months later, the detective finds Wollison sitting in the Joliet Penitentiary, picked up on a parole violation. Well, Detective Hopkins and I went to Julietette and we interrogated him. All he would say is I didn't do it. We were sure that when we went there, we could turn him around and get a confession out of him. And when we couldn't, we was very disappointed. Without a confession, the trail on Woloson runs cold. Meanwhile, the case grows more complex as two more young women are attacked near the S.I.U. Campus. In November,

30-year-old Joan Weatherall is raped and bludgeoned to death. Then in December, a female student is abducted and raped. She escapes and identifies a familiar suspect as her attacker. We'd had three murders of Yon Kowads, and we could put him near the scene of every one of. So when this one came along, we tried the same scenario. Was John Paul near here? Yes, he was working 200 yards away every day. So in my opinion, he was a good citizen.

John Paul Phillips is convicted in the November and December attacks. And while there is no physical evidence to link Phillips directly to Susan Shoemake's murder, Susan's family focuses on him as Susan's killer. So then from there, you would have been close to 50. Well, right, we were firmly convinced that John Paul Phillips was the man who killed Susan. So we thought this has to be the guy. 20 years later, however, an officer named Paul Eccles, find suspicion and guilt are two very different things.

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This is known as the Susan Shoemate Memorial Overpass. In the summer of 1981, Paul Eccles was a rookie officer when 21-year-old Susan Shoemake was raped and murdered. This room here contains all our major case evidence. This box on this shelf here is the evidence collected in the Susan Shoemate murder from 1980. Twenty years later, the case remains officially unsolved. Unofficially, many believe the murder was the work of local serial killer, John Paul Phillips. Initially, my peers, or those that were my supervisors in those years, certainly felt that John Paul Phillips was responsible for shoemate, just because of the fact that he was a killer.

He was proven to be a killer, and he'd worked within three or four hundred yards of the crime scene. By 2001, DNA testing is solving cases and can hopefully confirm the suspicions of original investigators regarding Susan Shoemake's murder. Everybody knew that he was capable and that he was in the area. And some of them had the opinion if John Paul Phillips was anywhere in the area and somebody was murdered, female specifically, then he probably did it. Forensic testing isolates a male DNA profile from the Shoemake evidence. Phillips, however, died in prison.

prison eight years earlier. To get his DNA, detectives must make a trip to the cemetery. Well, the immediate thought was the only way we're going to be able to do this is actually exhumed. In October of 2001, the remains of a serial killer are exhumed, but the DNA results are not what most expected. They compared it to the unknown male profile in the Susan Shumake case and found that the two did not match. So we essentially eliminated John Paul Phillips. With Phillips cleared, Eccles returns to his case file. I went into the case and I tried to find three primary suspects. Start with three, work with three, and then move on to another three.

And my intent was to go until we eliminated those suspects. Included on the suspect list is ex-convict Daniel Wollison. When you read the case file, Daniel Wollison does stick out. Wollison first surfaced as a suspect in 1981. after his bag was found near the murder scene. Now he's living in Detroit. Eccles reaches out to the Washington County Sheriff for help. This is the auto salvage yard where I was told Mr. Wollison worked at,

and this is where I had my first contact with him. Mike Downey is a detective with the Washington County Sheriff's Department. On August 29th, he pays Wollison a visit. Originally when I came up the driveway there, he was curious as to why I was, wanted to talk to him. And then once I explained to him why I was here and I was here on behalf of the Carbondale Police Department, that's when he got nervous. And his hands started to shake. He wouldn't keep eye contact with me anymore. And he wasn't interested in what I had to say anymore.

Downey asks Wollison for a sample of his DNA, but Wollison refuses. Detective Downey, however, has a plan. The plan was to set up surveillance on Mr. Wollison in order to obtain a cigarette butt to compare it with Carbondale sample. We're going to do it surreptitiously. Hopefully we would follow him. Wolves would be driving. We knew we smoked cigarettes. Maybe he would throw a cigarette butt out the window and we'd retrieve the cigarette butt

and then take it to the forensic lab for analysis. Lieutenant Richard Hayward runs the surveillance operation. For the first few days, we conducted surveillance of the salvage yard that he worked at, hoping to get him to leave and follow him and hopefully obtain a DNA sample. However, that was unsuccessful. A couple weeks later, Hayward learns that Woloson had recently sold his car. Investigators track the vehicle to its new owner in Detroit. And during my interview with him, I asked him if there were any cigarette butts in the car.

He stated yes, and I asked him if he smoked, or were the cigarette butts in the car when he bought it? He said they were in the car when he bought them. Hayward suspects the butts might belong to Woloson and sends them to the Michigan State Police Crime Lab for DNA testing. And it was on September 9th, 2004. I get a phone call in the morning. He says, look, I have the results of those four cigarette butts. I pull out the Susan Chewmate DNA report that has the unknown DNA profile.

It has all the genetic codes there. And I compare it back and forth. And voila, there it is. I have the same DNA profile. The Illinois Crime Lab confirms the match, and Paul Eccles heads to Michigan to pick up Willison and charge him with the murder of Susan Shoemaker. I could see the stress in his eyes. I mean, he was given me the signs that you would typically see in a person that was guilty.

He knew he was had. He knew that that day had finally arrived, the day that he had dreaded for so many years and hoped that would never arrive, he knew that that was the day. Michael Webick prosecutes Daniel Woloson for murder. I go back to a description of him in the pre-sentence. report that a friend or neighbor called him a Jekyll and Hyde type of individual. And we saw very much to Dr. Jekyll, a part of his personality throughout the proceedings. It was very polite, answered the judge, yes sir, no sir.

As his attorney said, a model client. And there is a deep, dark side to his heart. Yeah, I could see him as murder. In March of 2006, Wollison has found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to 40 years. Under Illinois law at the time the crime was committed, he could be out in as little as 18 years. It's a fact that didn't sit well with the prosecutors or Susan Shoemake's family. Susan Shoemake was just barely 21 years of age when she died. It's been almost 25 years since her murder.

Daniel Wollison will spend less time. in person than Susan was alive and less time than she has been dead and that's really unfair it's really unfair I was actually shocked when I first learned that the maximum sentence could only be 40 years you have to ask yourself what is a woman's life worth you know if the guy gets 40 years and that means he's out in 20 I think it would be a good question for a lot of women is that what your life is worth. That's what their life is worth in the state of Illinois. In 2024, Daniel Wollison died in prison. Thousands of free movies and TV shows. We're coming at you with everything we got.

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