Cold Case Files - REOPEN: DNA SPEAKS: Justice for Mary

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

When 23-year-old Mary Scott is found murdered in her San Diego home in 1969, a case with few leads quickly loses steam. Years later, Mary’s daughters grow determined to find answers about the mother they barely knew, and a crime that’s 50 years cold.Audible - Join Audible on the Audible app or subscribe hereSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode 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 1969 in San Diego, California. Tom Giacinto is a former cab driver. In 1969, this is where I picked Mary up

at the Star and Garner Night Club, where she was dancing. When you are a brand new cab driver, you don't get the best cab, and you don't get the best hours. So I had to work with Graveyard Shift. About 2 o'clock, people started coming out of the club, and Mary was standing by the Star and Garner, and she said, are you taking me home? So I said, yes.

I met her probably about a week or two prior. I picked her up on at least two other occasions, and so I actually was able to get to know her. I'd been in the Navy, so you become pretty judgmental, I guess, sometimes, of folks, and she was a good woman. I just, I knew she was. I drove her home here, of course, and it's my understanding that I was the last person to see her alive. The night is young at the Star and Garder, a hot spot of San Diego Nightlife.

But one of the club's most beloved dancers, 23-year-old Mary Scott, is a no-show for her shift. Mary's friend Doty goes to her apartment to check on her. Tony Johnson is a senior investigator with the San Diego District Attorney's Office. Mary was laying on her back, on the floor. She had blood riding on both sides of her face from her mouth. San Diego Police, including Detective Jim Singh, arrive at Mary's apartment minutes later. In 1969, I was a San Diego Police Detective working the homicide unit. When I arrived at the scene, I noticed Mary was laying on the floor just inside the door.

The chain was broken, and that part of the door casing, with the part of the chain still attached, was across the room. My theory was that there was a knock at the door, and Mary opened it briefly to the level of the chain because she was alone and tried to shut the door, and the suspect threw his shoulder into the door before she could get it latched, and the door hit her in the jaw, broke her jaw, knocked her on the ground,

and it looked like she had red marks on both sides of her neck and around the front of her throat. It was clear to me that it came from somebody, strangling her. It was visible that Mary had been the victim of a sexual assault. I had seen other sexual assault victims of this type, and it was apparent to me that there was semen on her body. Detectives start knocking on doors, questioning Mary's neighbors. There was one particular witness who lived almost next door to Mary. She heard the banging on the door. She heard the door open. Then she heard the crash and a scream.

Now we know that she got off work at 2 o'clock. She got home about 210, 2.15, and it happened right then. It was clear that it was a rape homicide. It's an emotional scene to see this young woman laying on the floor dead. But it's our job to stand in the shoes of the deceased victim and protect their rights against the world. All right. Rosalie Sands Take 1, A.B. Mark.

Rosalie Sands is Mary Scott's sister. This is the first time when you're sitting for this kind of interview about Mary. Why now? Why do you think it's important for us to know Mary more about her story? I was initially reluctant to participate in this because I can't watch these kinds of shows because it hurts too much. But it was important that Mary's voice be heard. It's just a story to everyone else.

but I knew her before the crime, and I knew who she was, and I knew what was lost. I'm Mary's youngest sister. Mary was six and a half years older than me. Mary made me feel really special and loved, like she wanted to be with me. She would always answer all my questions for me, the kind my mom might be too embarrassed to answer.

I could always ask Mary. Music was a huge part of our family when I was little. We would sing in the car on the way to church. I loved that, and Mary had a huge stack of 45s. And I still remember most of the songs. There was just always music. Mary used to go to dances all the time, and they would go to the USO.

You had to be, I think, 16 to go. So when Mary was 15, she got a fake ID so that she could go to the dances, where the sailors all came and they danced. Patrick Weibel is Mary Scott's ex-husband. I went in the Navy in 1962. did my training and lucked out and got stationed in San Diego, California. One night, had a good friend that needed to go somewhere.

I took him, and he asked me if I'd come back and get him. Well, I did, and Mary happened to be with him. What made me fall in love with us, she showed me things I didn't really know, you know, because I'm a Cajun from Louisiana. And she was a California girl. and just made me happy, you know. Donna Weibel is Mary Scott's daughter. She journaled quite a few things in here

that happened along her happiness and with my dad. Mary says one day on the beach, Patrick told me he loved me and wanted to marry me. It took me a long time to answer because this was a big decision for me, and I wanted to be sure. I said, yes, while eating pizza at a cozy restaurant, one of our favorites. I remember when Mary got engaged.

She's 17. She came home from a dance, and she went into my parents' room and woke my mama and was kind of squealing, like, look at my ring! Look at my ring! It was so exciting. I just decided she was the one I wanted. You know, when you catch a beautiful catfish, you don't let it go. Once they're married, the couple has two girls. Christine is born in 1964 and Donna the year after.

The young couple moves back to Patrick's home in Apalus, Louisiana. My marriage to marry was good, but I think she just couldn't get used to Louisiana life. They were here, I think, two years, and she fell out of love with my dad. So she left my dad and took my sister and I with her back to California. She just wanted to go home, and I wasn't going to try to stop her. I wanted her to be happy. She had to hustle to take care of us, and she started dancing at a club and leave us with sitters. She never got to see her girls, and she had all that mother guilt.

So she flew back to Louisiana with the girls and came back without them. I was so stunned because how can you leave your girls? She said that they were so happy there, she didn't have the heart to take them away. And that even though it didn't work out with her and Pat, she wanted the girls to stay there with his family because they felt loved and secure. And I know she was going to come back for us.

I know it. But she never had the chance to do that. Detective Singh questions the person closest to Mary, her best friend, Doty, about the days leading up to Mary's murder. She told me that the two of them wanted to get away, so they went over to Las Vegas. After they had returned,

they found that Mary's apartment had been broken into, that the front screen had been taken off and a window opened and things were strewn about inside, and there was a note. And the note was from Tom Krause. Tom Krauss was Mary's boyfriend. He wanted to be with her, and she wasn't responding in the same way that she had in the past years.

he didn't like that rejection. He felt that Mary was his, and Mary was done with him. And so he wasn't willing to accept that. Chris Lindberg is a deputy district attorney for San Diego County. When someone is killed, especially in a violent way like Mary Scott was killed, sometimes you look at the people closest to the victim to see if there are strong feelings there, if there's a reason to kill. Detective Singh focuses on Tom Krause and his dramatic breakup.

with Mary Scott only two days before her murder. Mary had decided that she was going to tell him that it was over. They had a quarrel and Tom left, but he was not at all happy. But Mary was happy to see him go. Detective Singh and his partner interviewed Tom Krause at the San Diego Police Station. We documented his story about where he was during the time when this incident occurred. We verified. He actually worked in another bar at another place, and he was there.

We asked him if he'd take a polygraph, and he agreed. There was no deception in his answers. Detectives have no physical evidence tying him to the scene. He's off the hook for the moment. I was in bed, and someone knocked on the door. I knew something was up. I said, what's going on? And my mom just said, Mary was raped and strangled.

And I was just stunned. I'd never experienced a death. And I didn't know what I was supposed to feel or think or do. And so I started punching my pillow, I remember, and screaming and yelling and saying how unfair it was and that she never got to live her life and who knows what she would have done and all those kinds of things.

Of course, I told my closest friends. And everybody was shocked, but they really always seem more interested in the crime than in the loss? This is the newspaper article that was printed the day after my mom was murdered. It stated,

Go-Go Dancer 24 slain in an apartment. The nude body of a go-go-dancer was found late yesterday in the furniture-strewn living room of her East San Diego apartment. Erica Nichols is a journalist,

an author of reclaiming Mary, a new perspective on a cold-case murder. In 1969, because there was such a culture clash between a more traditionalist society and a more kind of free-loving society.

That really had an impact in the kind of headlines they were being put out about Mary and her case at the time. They really just focused on her job as a go-go dancer. It was so weird to me because that was not who she was. That was just her job. But they used that as the only descriptor. And then it was always about the crime and that she was a go-go dancer, and that was it.

Honestly, I just think it was disrespect to my mom as a human being. It's not just their fault, because my family wouldn't talk to the press. They came and my dad called them vultures and told them to go away. So, you know, they didn't get our side of the story. When you focus on just their occupation, I think as a society, we're trying to distance ourselves from it. I think we're trying to say, this is what happened to her, and here's what's what.

she did so if I don't do that then I'm probably okay when in reality we know that you know someone's career has no bearing on the crime that happens to them I had read the newspaper that Mary had been murdered she was someone I genuinely appreciated as a person it was really bothersome to think that she had met her demise I thought I probably should report it to the the police because they may not know that she was taken home in a cab. And also because I was going to the police academy about seven days later, I was going to be sworn in as a police officer. So I had to make sure that I gave them all the information that I had.

I met Mary a week or two before the murder. I had been called to pick her up and take her to several different locations. I only knew her as lucky at the time. There was an overriding feeling that she was protective, that she was always concerned about her safety. On one occasion, she called for a cab, and I picked her up, and I didn't see her at first because she was standing in the shadows.

She did not want to attract attention. Then on the night that I picked her up when she was murdered, she was calling for a cab to go home, even though the patrons there would have been more than happy to drive her home. For her own safety, she wanted to be in a cab. On one occasion, I took Mary to the Greyhound Station when she was going to Vegas, her in Doty.

I knew that they were good friends, and I knew about Doty's husband, and Mary's influence over his then wife. Keith Chris Schofferson was Doty's husband. They had been on and off. She told me that her husband was a bartender, and that he had been trying to get back together with her, and it was very common for him to finish his job at the bar at 2 o'clock

and drive to Mary's apartment and knock on the door in order to see Doty, knowing that she would be there. Doty was not clear whether or not her husband was the one that did this to marry. But several other times, Keith had come over there after his shift to try to talk to his wife, and that wasn't working out real good for him. And this incident looked like it could be exactly something that he might be involved in.

We had to try to eliminate as many people as we could in order to narrow down our focus on anyone. And that focus actually happened pretty fast with Doty's husband. He did his best to give us his alibi. It was very tough to verify. The incidents that he took, talked about, we found out that they didn't happen on the days that he said they happened.

Everything he told us turned out to be wrong. Detectives have strong suspicions about Keith Christofferson, but that's about all they have. You have to understand that this was 1969. It was clear that we might have identifying information on the rape kit, but we didn't know what DNA was. There wasn't enough physical evidence, and we just couldn't prove that. anything related to him. We couldn't put him in handcuffs.

With no more leads to pursue and no physical evidence to connect any one suspect to the crime, the investigation into Mary Scott's murder sputters, and the case goes cold. Lauren Malloy spent 30 years believing her mother died of natural causes. That's what everyone told her. That's what she believed. Until one day she got a phone call that changed everything. A woman claiming to be her. her mom's best friend, told Lauren that her mother was murdered and that no one had ever investigated

it. So she did what the detectives wouldn't. She pulled the threads, knocked on doors, and confronted the contradictions. And what she found, it's worse than she imagined. Something happened to Lori Malloy. Someone killed her, and Lauren won't stop until she finds out who. The system may have given up on her mom, but family never will. Listen to my mom's murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all 10 episodes early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. It's now 1976, seven years after Mary's murder.

Our team in 1969 had an incredibly markable run on solving cases, but this particular homicide we were not able to solve. This was not my investigative case. but because I had been the cab driver, and the last one besides the killer to see her alive, I lived with that case in my head, the unsolved ones you live with the rest of your life. I think we're around 11.

I was 11, and Christine was 12. My grandma had this room that stayed locked all the time. I don't know how, but my sister opened the door. And there was a chest in there, which looked like a wedding hope chest, and we opened it, and we got the shock. of our lives. We found my mom's wedding gown. We found her birth certificate. We found the telegram from when she died. We found her death certificate. We didn't know that. Our mom died.

My grandma wouldn't tell us anything. And growing up, my sister and I never asked too much. We confronted my grandma, and she was very upset because we were forbidden to go in that room. But then she finally admitted what was going on. But it was just a shock to my sister and I to find all that. From then on, our curiosity was bigger than ever because we didn't understand, but we tried to understand. As the girls grow from their teens to early 20s, Donna's big sister makes a bold decision. Christine wanted to pursue things about my mom. I didn't want to have anything to do with this because my grandma just pounded in our head.

as we were growing up, you don't fool with California. My grandma, she was terrified. She didn't want whoever killed my mom to come back and get us. Determined to find her California family, Christine hires a private investigator. One day, it was probably about 1988 or 89. Christine called me and said, is this Rosalie Scott?

And I said, yes. And she said, my name's Christine. You probably don't remember me. And I said, of course I remember you. And I was so excited. She couldn't wait to come visit us in California. She said she really wanted to meet her California relatives. She was really sweet.

It's now December 20th, 1989, 20 years after Mary's murder. Christine was, I think, 25. And her car slipped on ice and flipped over and she was killed. I just couldn't believe it. I never got to meet her. It crushed Rosalie and myself and my mom. family. Christine was the one that wanted to pursue this about my mother. I wasn't going to pursue it because I was raised where you just don't fool with it. But one

day about four years later it was just like something fell from the sky and I changed my mind. I said I want to do it for her. Donna got in touch with me and I was really surprised to hear from her. She said she wanted to fulfill Christine's dream. I'm going to California. Here, this is your mom. Boy, I had Christine look a lie. Donna flew out to San Diego to meet us. I'm sure she was hoping to get answers and such,

because that's how she is. We went right to where my mom was buried in Greenwood Memorial. She really wanted to see Mary's grave, which I don't think I had ever visited it. She had a beautiful marker that had the year of birth wrong, because Mary had a fake ID that made her a year older. So everyone thought she was born in 45, but she was born in 46. That bothered me when I saw that on the marker. That's not even the right year.

Donna was really upset. She cried and cried. That was really uncomfortable for me. And then after that, she took us riding around to my mom's apartment where she used to live. We went ride by the club where she danced. The Star and Gartar Club was still there, still open, and still go-going. When we go back to my Aunt Rosalie's, I cook a gumbo. I just made this delicious gumbo. Can you smell it? And she's a good liar, too.

It was fun. Is that Mary? Yes. This is your mom and Johnny. Oh, really? How cute? Look her two frontenamist. I learned a lot, and I had a big family in California.

It was a beautiful, beautiful four days. Oh, there's Mary. Oh, look at her. She had freckles, too. Donna leaves California even more determined to get justice for her mother. When I got back from San Diego, I had called and checked on my mom's case. They said they're still working on it, but there wasn't any leads. I was very excited about, you know, that they're pursuing it, and they're going to really work hard.

Every cold case is important. Every cold case is deserving of attention. and investigation. Investigators will look at cases again and again over the years to see if something jumps out, if some new technique can be tried, if there's some way now that it can be solved. It's now 1999, 30 years after Mary's murder. The San Diego cold case team began a review of all the cases where there might be a benefit to do DNA testing.

I called again, and they said they had about 25 files. with preserved DNA. And they pulled my mom's file out of that stack. DNA had been developed to such a point that we could distinguish individuals. What they did was those unresolved suspects who were not completely cleared. The detectives went out and got their DNA

to do a one-on-one comparison. The preserved DNA found on Mary Scott at the crime scene in 1969 is compared to the DNA of the cases lingering suspects. Doty's ex-hushusband, husband Keith Christofferson, and Mary's ex-boyfriend, Tom Krause. DNA being the major new tool that they had, the thinking must have been like, we will get an answer now. Surely we will find out who killed Mary Scott. But they didn't.

They were able to eliminate each of those suspects as being an offender of Mary's murder. It is very disappointing. The worst part is when you think you've got the right guy, and then it's not him. but at least you get a definite answer one way or another. I'd kind of given up. And then the years went by and the years went by. And I would still make contact with them at the police department. But, you know, it was always not yet Donna or no, we're working on it. It's going to take a long time through DNA.

It's now 2018, 49 years after Mary Scott's murder. All right, we got to go back to that breaking news. We told you at the top of the hour, an arrest in the case of the... The East Area Rapists and Golden State Killer has been made. Let me first by saying this. The answer has always been in Sacramento. Genetic genealogy, it provides a lead. It tells us somebody that has a relationship,

a family relationship to the DNA that we're interested in from the crime scene. But it doesn't necessarily tell you definitively who committed the crime. I'm reading all these articles about how people are using forensic genealienable. to solve these old murders. And I knew they had DNA from my sister's case. The DNA was so preserved. It was from the rape kit. My friend, who's a retired San Diego police officer,

I asked him if he could ask them to open my sister's case up again. I said, they're solving all these old cases now with DNA. Don't you think they could do that for my sister? There was conversation among law enforcement. Why can't we use genealogy to, to identify a criminal. The genealogical community was very worried about the privacy aspects. But then along came Golden State Killer,

and then all of a sudden everybody was jumping on the bandwagon, and I jumped as fast as I could because I just saw this thing is going to be great. It's now 2020, 50 years after Mary Scott's murder. Rosa Lee and Donna had originally kind of got this ball rolling. Then I was approached by the sergeant of the cold case team He asked me to tickle it this case. All of the evidence that had been impounded was still available.

What's amazing is that you think about the evidence, the physical evidence in the case that was kept for 51 years in the property room. So you had, for example, the nightgown that she was wearing, but really what we wanted was the semen from the swabs from Mary's body. It had already been developed into codis, but there was no hit. So now, being 2020, we could do genealogical testing and hopefully find the person who left that sample.

Using public records and public genealogical databases, DNA experts test the sample from Mary's body at the crime scene. Four months later, a promising lead. It's been 50 years. And the crime scene tells us what happened there that night back in 1969. The killer had left behind a DNA person. profile that ultimately was matched to John Sippos. Detective Johnson digs in to John Sippos.

John Sipos at the time, I believe he was 74. He had a very nice house in Pennsylvania in a little town called Schnecksville, which is right outside Allentown. He'd been married for 40-some years to his wife. He had a career, a successful career. The only thing notable about him was that his neighbors couldn't stand him. One neighbor was ready to move out and sell his house because Sipos was so hard to be next door to. John Sipos was the right gender, the right age, and he was tied to San Diego.

He had been in the military out here. In 1969, John Sipos was a sailor assigned to NAS Miramar. He was a mechanic working on some of the jet engines. Interestingly enough, many of his coworkers would go to the Sturring Garder. We couldn't find anybody that could say, I went to the Star and Garter with John, but the fact that other people from his base went there gave us an indication that might be the case with John as well. Also, it was interesting to notice that right around the time of Mary's murder, John happened to live just about two miles from where Mary's apartment was, also very close to Star and Garter.

I mean, everything fit. I got a call from Tony Johnson telling me, Donna, we found him. him and I could have just hit the floor. I really did not believe this would happen. And he said, I can't tell you who he is, but I could tell you he's in Pennsylvania. That's all I knew. I was just beyond excited. I just knew my sister was full of joy. We pursued her dream. That's what she wanted, and we did it. But it still wasn't over. Welcome to Pluto Fo. If you knew the name of the movie you'd like to see, just stream it for free on Pluto TV, where all your blockbuster favorites are landing all summer long. Catch Anchorman, the legend of Ron Burgundy. Fantastic. The Matrix

Trilogy. Welcome to the real world. Mean girls. Shut up. Titanic. I'm the king of the world. And so much more. For showtimes, press nothing. They're free 24-7. That is so fetch. On Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. In order to finally make an arrest, detectives need to be 100, percent certain John Sippos is their guy. You have to do some work to try to confirm or deny the lead that you have. One of the common things is to try to get a DNA sample from the offender, which can be done by picking up items of discarded trash that the offender might have thrown out, cigarette butts, straws, cups, band-aids.

Once you throw your trash in the trash and you put it out on the curb, we can come by and we pick up that trash can and we go sort through it and see what we can see. If he were close by, we would probably go out and get that ourselves, but he happened to be in Pennsylvania, which is a long ways away. We knew from previously watching the residents that only Mr. Sippos and his wife lived there, so we reached out to FBI. We talked to an agent who was set up and did the trash run. In that trash was a band-aid. The band-aid had his blood on it. Blood is a very rich source of DNA. So it was collected in Pennsylvania where he lived,

taken back to San Diego, tested by the San Diego Police Department crime lab. We found out that the DNA from the blood matched the DNA from the crime scene. It felt damn good, I can tell you that. Since we've started doing these new investigations with genealogy, we're finding more and more of these one-time offenders, where they do some horrible crime. then they blend back into society. And that kind of runs counter

to the way the average cop thinks because we think he did it once, he's going to do it again. It's amazing to me that somebody could do a one-timer like this case and not do another one, but that's what it looks like. The DNA and John Sipo's blood

is a match to the crime scene DNA. Police arrest Sipos and charge him with the 1969 murder of Mary Scott. He denied participating in Mary. He had a very kind of an arrogant attitude, but he said a couple of things that didn't sit well with any of us, really. One of the things he said was, did she get what she wanted? In other words, you know, she's some kind of sex maniac.

Then he also said, I would never associate with a woman like that. Got to see that video. That was very chilling. He was talking about her as though she didn't matter, and that was just offensive and horrible. Horrible. This man said that about my mom. It's like he was mocking her. You just don't do that. That's horrible on the on the family. You get this call from Tony that they've identified somebody. What's that conversation like? Very lively and probably interspersed with lots of words that I can't use today to say, wow, that was really great. And are you sure? And I can't believe.

I mean, she was never forgotten. And so all of a sudden in my mind, it actually starts to relieve you. Wow. I got a call at home from Tony Johnson, and he said, well, we solved one of your cold cases. And I said, I only had one, Mary Ellen Scott. I was excited. It was something I never forgot.

When John Seppos was arrested, I felt a lot better, but I was going to feel a lot better when he was tried and convicted. More than 50 years after the crime, John Sipos is tried for Mary's murder. It's special because this case has waited so long for this moment. We were all very nervous. When I saw him in person, I just kept thinking, this is the last. face that my sister saw. This is the person that terrified her and killed her. And to look at him with that in mind was horrible, horrible. We really didn't know what the verdict might be. It was a very old case. After one day of deliberation, the jury reaches a verdict. When they said guilty,

Oh my God. I couldn't explain the emotion coming through me. It was like a miracle. You know, it was like I had chills everywhere. I always hoped that they would catch them, you know. And I'm so grateful that Donna and my sister-law pushed it and took a long time, but they wouldn't let it go. John Sipos is sentenced to a prison term of seven years to life.

The sentencing for Mr. Sipos was based on what the sentence would have been back in 1969. Unfortunately, we weren't able to proceed on the rape charge because so much time had passed and there's a statute of limitations for rape. He still never admitted it and he won't admit it. I had so much hatred for him and I still do. I have to forgive and I'm going to let it go one day. I will. After 53 years, this is the first time I've been able to tell the story of Mary. She was a great big sister to have, and she helped me through a lot. I wish I had her longer. I wish I'd gotten to have an adult relationship with her. I just never know what that would have been like.

It's strange to think I'm so much older than her now. But she's still my big sister. I want people to remember. that she was someone very special. She wanted everyone to be happy. If they weren't happy, she was going to make them happy. She's brightened so many people up when she was alive. She did.

That's what I want people to remember. If you know the name of the movie you'd like to see, just stream it for free on Pluto TV. Where all your blockbuster favorites are landing all summer long. Catch Anchorman, the legend of Ron Burgundy. Fantastic. The Matrix Trilogy. Welcome to the real world.

Mean girls. Shut up. Titanic. I'm the key in the world. And so much more. For showtimes, press nothing. They're free 24-7. That is so fetch.

On Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.