Cold Case Files - REOPENED: A Knock At The Door

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

The killing of a woman in a Virginia hotel room goes unsolved for a quarter of a century before investigators are finally able to zero in on the killer.Check out our amazing sponsors!Homes.com - Visit Homes.com, we've done your homework!Rosetta Stone - Get Rosetta Stone's Lifetime Membership for 50% OFF by visiting RosettaStone.com/COLDCASE 

DNA, when used correctly, can be an extremely useful tool when it comes to matching a suspect to a crime. In many of the cases we've covered, the reason that it went cold was because the DNA technology we use now wasn't available to the original investigators. This is one of those cases. The original detectives used the investigative tools of the time, but they simply weren't able to connect the killer to the crime. Cold case units, like the one in Fairfax County, Virginia,

apply today's science to previously unsolved cases. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. I'm Brooke, and here's the impeccable Bill Curtis with a classic case, A Knock at the Door. This is the Cold Case Homicide Office. It's part of the Homicide squad in Fairfax County Police. And this is where we store a number of the cases that were... Steve Mielewski and Bob Murphy are cold case detectives for Fairfax County, Virginia.

These photographs only represent a small number. Tack to the wall of their squad room, the faces of some of their victims. It's sort of a matter of respect to these people that they're here and it's our responsibility to find answers to their deaths. Any homicide detective will tell you they have their cases that are really at the top of their list of what they would like to solve. One of those for me is this one.

It's a double homicide of a couple here in Vienna, Virginia, back in 1997. And this case is still open. This little boy here was found dead, naked and dead, in a stream in Fairfax County in 1972, I believe it was. We have no idea who he is, this little boy. He's maybe four to six years old. In the winter of 2004, Murphy and Malewski pulled out the picture of another victim.

Her name is Mona Lisa Ebney, and she was murdered in 1978. That's Mona Lisa Abney, a beautiful woman, you know, and smart and everybody, the kind of person everybody likes. You know, just a sad case that she came up here to Northern Virginia and was killed in a hotel room. It was called by the communications section that said that there was a homicide at the Tyson's Corner Holiday Inn. Scott Boatwright is a crime scene technician for the Fairfax County Police. On January 28th, he's called out to a murder. Apparently a maid came in to clean the room in the morning and when

she entered the room she found the victim. Inside room 722, 25 year old Mona Lisa Abney lies dead on the floor. She was nude basically from the waist down and she was kind of lying on her back. Automatically you would think she'd been raped. The room appears to be ransacked and Mona's cash, jewelry and credit cards are missing. Main thing you're looking for is fingerprints because back then that was our DNA was fingerprints. So the big emphasis, hair, fingerprints, blood. Boatwright dusts for prints, bags the evidence, and photographs the scene. Then it hits him. The ransacking is staged.

The chair was turned over. The lamps were just turned over, but not really damaged in any way. Maybe someone did this just to make it appear that there was a tremendous struggle. You kill this woman, and yet you don't want to break the land. A medical examiner establishes the victim was raped and strangled. Seaman is collected as well as an unknown Caucasian hare. Meanwhile, investigator Ron Yeager arrives at the Holiday Inn and begins to work the building room by room, person by person. Well, everybody's a suspect from management right on down to the employees, guests, so on and so forth. We went through the entire roster of people that were there.

One of the people investigators talked to, a hotel maid, who claims she let a man into Mona's hotel room an hour after she checked in. She said she let him into Mona's room because he said he didn't have his key and he didn't want to wake her. Basically what she explained was a white male about six foot or more, very stocky build like a football player. An artist works with the maid to develop a sketch of the man. Meanwhile, the phone in Mona's hotel room rings. At the other end of the line, a man named Wilbert Abney.

He mentioned who he was. He said he'd been trying to reach his wife and couldn't. And I said, Mr. Abney, I said, I can't tell you anything about it right now, but your wife is deceased. He wasn't emotional. He wasn't emotional or anything like that. Abney drives two hours to Fairfax County, IDs his wife's body, and gives a statement.

His cold demeanor is startling to investigators, as well as to friends and family. It was a Sunday evening, early Sunday evening, that we got the call from him. Patricia Parker is Mona's friend. And it was Wilbert, and I said, what's going on? What's wrong? He said, Mona's dead. And I just lost it. You know, I said, you know, you've got to be kidding. No, no, I just lost it. And he said, no, Mauna's dead. He was so relaxed when he said it. It was like, she's dead.

For Parker, the grief runs deep. So, too, does the suspicion that somehow Wilbert Abney was involved. It was no sadness. No sadness at all. Just as if he's calling to say, you know, it may rain tomorrow. And as upset as I was, something just didn't sound right to me.

You have a question in your mind, is the husband involved? Things don't look necessarily that way, but is he involved in having somebody else do the job for him? But Abney looks nothing like the suspect's sketch. And you can see it is nowhere as close to this gentleman, not a difference. Still, Yeager's suspicions are heightened when Ebeney tries to collect an insurance policy, taken out just a few weeks earlier.

I think it was a hundred thousand double-indentity, which set him up very well. We learned who signed the policy. It was the fault of the forgery. His wife didn't sign the policy. Tells me we have more motive now. Ebony sues the insurance company for the funds, but loses the battle in court. Meanwhile, Yeager unearths another red flag. Ebony was having an affair. When Yeager interviews Ebony's girlfriend, she recalls a phone call from Ebney the morning Mona was found murdered. It was about 9.30 that morning that he called the lady and told her that his wife was deceased.

About an hour later, I get the call from him. And that's when I tell him that she's deceased. So he has knowledge of her death before he ever talks to me. That's when I realized, I said, that this man is my man. More and more fingers pointing in the right direction, but you can't put the man in the room. If you can't put him in the room, you can't charge him. Abney passes a polygraph and provides prints and hair samples.

None match up to the evidence. The company passes a polygraph and provides prints and hair samples. None match up to the evidence. So that's where we came up short all the time on things that would get a conviction. Meanwhile, the hunt is on for the white male spotted entering Mona's hotel room. We put out the information, like the teletype and so forth. One of the guys on the police department worked homicide, came up with an individual, and asked me, he said, you might want to take a look at this guy. This guy is Michael Grotto, a man being held in another county for assault charges, and

a man who looks eerily similar to the sketch. Mainly the eyes, very similar, enough to be honest to say that this could be this. During a live lineup, the maid fingers Gratto as the man she let into Mona's room. The trail is once again heating up. Detectives get a search warrant for Gratto's hair. And that was sent to the lab in Virginia, and they said there was a lot of similarities, but not a match.

Grotto is eliminated as a suspect. Detectives are left with a lot of suspicions, but not a lot of answers for Mona Lisa Abney. A lot was taken other than just a life, you know, her future. A future that would have been probably a big asset to the family. I'm sure they're very proud of her. It's a shame that this lady would be a benefit to society. Very, very frustrating. Very frustrating.

I just felt that she was done a great injustice. Mona Lisa Abney's murder is boxed up and shipped to the cold files, where it will stay for more than two decades, until two cold case detectives pick up the case and catch a break. I think we've got something to work with here, forensically. They were perfectly preserved, they were dried, so the evidence from 1978 was still on those swabs. the evidence from 1978 was still on those swabs. The evidence we needed was still on those swabs.

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your family. It's a whole cul-de-sac of home shopping information all at your fingertips. Homes.com, we've done your homework. Mona's husband, Wilbert, was the initial suspect the investigators focused on for her murder. He had taken out a life insurance policy on her just weeks before her death, and he was having an affair. The thing was, he passed a polygraph, and his fingerprints and hair samples didn't seem to match the ones at the scene. That was the science of the time, and the investigators had to let him go and look for a different suspect.

This is the police property room where we keep cold case evidence. There's rapes and murders and some other crimes here. In an old jail in Fairfax County, the ghosts come calling. Murder unsolved and sometimes forgotten. Items of evidence that speak of lives largely unlived. We've got somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 open cases. And they go back to the late 60s. This bicycle here belonged to a little girl. open cases and they go back, you know, back to the late 60s.

This bicycle here belonged to a little girl. I think she was about 10 years old. Right. This little girl's body was found, I think, under a bush and she had died of suffocation and her bicycle had been found several days earlier and it's just extremely sad. Every time I see that bicycle, you know, I think of her. A lot of these boxes we've touched,

you know, like this case right here. All these boxes represent a family that was killed in 1999. There was a triple murder in 1999 of an entire family, a husband, a wife, and their 16-year-old son. For every one of these boxes, you know, there's a human tragedy. There's a story here to be told, you know, one of these boxes, there's a human tragedy. There's a story here to be told with all these boxes.

And that's our job. That's what we do. If we can resolve these and hopefully one day move these boxes out of here, ultimately that's our goal. In January of 2004, Murphy and Malewski pull out a box from 1978 with the name Mona Lisa Abney scrawled on the side. Right, she was a young woman in her mid-20s,

came up to Washington, D.C. area to do some shopping at the Tyson's Corner Mall, and she was found strangled to death in her room by a maid. Detectives dig through the evidence, looking for a lead. Here's some documents it looks like that they collected in the room that were probably documents that were in Mona Lisa's handbag or found on the bed. Here's your hair slides. When detectives pull out a rape kit, they know they're in luck.

I think we've got something to work with here, forensically. They were perfectly preserved, they were dried, so the evidence from 1978 was still on those swabs. The evidence we needed was still on those swabs. This is the main examination room that we have here in our forensic laboratory. The swabs are sent to Mary Green at the State Crime Lab. Yeah, there was no mold, there was no indication that there was degradation visually on the sample, so it seemed hopeful.

Green detects a presence of semen and is able to extract a DNA profile. Cold case detectives have their first break. Now they need a suspect to match up with their profile. Every police department has these police reports, but they don't tell you the heart and soul of the case. You have to go back sometimes to the detective's original notes, and you go back to his, you know, their notebook that they took the day the case occurred. You get some of their thoughts and what they were, where they were headed with this case. Yeah, this is one of the cases like many when we got it. It kind of had a built-in suspect, a white guy.

That guy, Michael Grotto. He fit the description. He was known to hang out at the Holiday Inn. And he was eventually identified by a witness as being there in the hotel that night. So we thought, this guy is perfect. And he had a long history. He had a long criminal history of, you know,

forcible rapes and crimes like that. Grotto goes to the top of the detective suspect list. There is, however, a problem. We found out he had committed suicide, you know, several years back. So we were able to go back, and we found some of the original hairs that the original detectives pulled from grotto. So we resubmitted the hairs and they still had root follicles so they were able to do nuclear DNA on that hair.

Hoping for a DNA match and a quick resolution to the case, cold case detectives send out the hairs to the crime lab. The results come back as a shock. Yeah, I called Detective Moluski and told him that he was eliminated. I think they were surprised. We thought it would be Grotto. Obviously it wasn't. As for the white man seen entering Mona's room,

cold case detectives suspect the maid was simply mistaken. No, I don't think there was ever a white man led into Mona's room. Cold case detectives suspect the maid was simply mistaken. Oh no, I don't think there was ever a white man led into Mona's room. I think she led a man into another room. It's back to the drawing board for cold case detectives. Took a turn, you know, then it became a wide open investigation. You know, and that led us eventually to Abney. Abney is Wilbert Abney, Mona's husband and former merger suspect. And it's clear that he had at least one girlfriend and may have been cultivating a second during the time that he was still married to Mona Lisa Abney. He had just bought a new insurance policy on his wife. Cold case detectives decide they want a word with Ebony and perhaps a swab of his DNA.

He's in Pennsylvania, a small town outside of Philadelphia. He lived with his mother, who was an elderly woman, and he lived with his new wife. On September 29, cold case detectives find Wilbert Abney at home, living a quiet life. That, however, is all about to change. We knock on his door and he answered immediately. And Steve tells him what we're doing. You know, we're cold case homicide detectives.

We're going to reinvestigate the murder of his wife from 28 years ago. Typically we expect to see a reaction of relief or someone that's actually glad that we're doing this, thanking us for doing this. And we got exactly the opposite from Abney. His reaction was, well, why would you do that? Why would you go back and work on a murder from 28 years ago? Some bells and whistles started going off in our heads. What an inappropriate reaction for somebody who was re-investigating your wife's murder.

In 1978, Abney told police he had never been inside the hotel where Mona was killed and had not had sex with his wife in three weeks. Cold case detectives asked for a sample of his DNA to confirm the story. He refused. He said he didn't think he wanted to do that. At first he said he wanted to call a lawyer. Abney balks at providing the sample until the current Mrs. Abney pulls her husband aside.

Well Mrs. Abney stepped in, his current wife stepped in and said, can we talk in private? And they're in the kitchen talking for a few minutes. And I know what happened in that kitchen. I know she told him, Look, you had nothing to do with this. You're innocent. Give him the buckle swabs and help him. So the pressure really was on him at that point. So he came back in and he said,

Okay, I'll give it to you. Back at the crime lab, Mary Green begins the comparison. I did the same DNA process on that swab and I was able to attain a DNA profile and it matched. It was a very strong match. The numbers were greater than the world population or greater than six billion individuals. The pieces of murder are starting to come together. And it's clear that the original detectives thought that Abney was involved. They just couldn't put Abney in Northern Virginia during the time that Mona was killed.

And that's what DNA gave us. We had the scientific advantage that they never had. DNA lays the foundation, but cold case detectives need more. In the Abney murder book, they find it. A person no one has talked to in more than 25 years. He reaches in his pocket and pulls out something that looks like latex gloves, rolls down the window and throws them out of the vehicle over the railing into the river. vehicle over the railing into the river. As we step into 2025, it's time to reflect on our goals and aspirations. Have you ever considered how learning a new language could transform your life?

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So we walk up to the door and knock on the door and sure enough he opens the door and he says I'm Michael Clark. And he said something to the effect where you guys been I've been waiting to talk to law enforcement for 20-some years now. You think man he can't beat this. Murphy and Malewski are working the 1978 murder of Mona Lisa Abney. DNA has linked her husband Wilbert Abney to the crime scene. The phone rang early one Saturday morning. It was Abney. He said to me, they have found Mona dead. Will you go with me to identify the body?

Well, he picks me up in this little white Corvette and he asks me to drive. And I agreed to do that. And before we got a mile from my home, I had a very uncomfortable feeling. But what I remember distinctly was his spending the life insurance proceeds from his wife's death. I remember specifically his talking about buying 12 custom tailored suits, about buying a new Rolls Royce and a big house. Abney is saying, I'm going to be a rich man. I've got all these life insurance policies. I'm going to be rich.

My gut says, this guy smells. There's something very, very wrong. And I was very uncomfortable being in the vehicle with him. You know, Mr. Clark said his mouth was just hanging open. He couldn't believe that this man was talking about. This clearly was not the demeanor of a man who just lost his wife. At this point we're about ready to enter the mouth of the Boulevard Bridge going south to north. Clark and Abney drive over the bridge on their way to ID the body. When Wilbert Abney rolls down a window in the car.

We're approaching, being over the water, just as we got up to about this point, as soon as we got over water, Abney rolled that window down, took out what appeared to be latex glove and tossed him over that railing. If Abney is able to do this to his wife, then my family, I'm feeling that perhaps my family isn't being threatened. If he's able to do that, what else is he capable of doing? We just can't believe our good luck. If he's able to do that, what else is he capable of doing? We just can't believe our good luck.

We just can't believe that we stumbled into a witness of this importance. More than two months after taking Clark's statement, gold case detectives walk into Wilbert Abney's house and begin to ask some hard questions. So we go back and we sit in the living room and Steve tells them we got the DNA results. And he just looked at us and Steve said, it's your DNA. He started lying. He started telling us some things that we knew were not true. He's really a very narcissistic person.

I think he feels like he can control the situation. He can manage it. Ebony denies killing his wife but offers no explanation for the DNA match. Then he agrees to a polygraph. So from there we went over to the local district attorney's office and he took the polygraph and failed it miserably. Cold case detectives return to Virginia and contemplate a possible murder charge against Abney.

Before they get too far, however, the phone rings. Commissar, Detective Murphy. Yes, Detective Murphy. This is Wil Abney. Wilbert, how are you doing this morning? Two days after failing his polygraph, Wilbert Abney calls police. What would be the most time I'd be looking at in your estimate? Well, you know the most time the absolute most time you could do is life in prison Basically, he's saying you know look I'm not saying I did this but if I did

What would I be charged with and how much time would I get? So it became you're kind of a cat-and thing with him, a negotiation, if you will. Was it an accident? It could have been. I'm trying to understand. Noting five separate phone calls, Abney fishes for information. What would be the range on manslaughter? I think one to ten.

Manslaughter. Say they gave me ten years, I'd have to do two and a half. Under 1978 guidelines, I think it's something like that, yes. This to me, this is a person that did this crime and he's looking for a way to negotiate a resolution to it in his best interest. He's trying to manage this whole situation and it really goes to his arrogance that he thinks he can manage this situation. Where would I do my time? Well, somewhere in Virginia. But there are a number of facilities somewhere in Virginia. But there are a number of facilities in Virginia. I mean, there's minimum security facilities that I don't... I wouldn't get minimum security.

After a month of back and forth, Abney tells detectives he's ready to tell his story. What really happened that night at the Holiday Inn. He said, I went there. I went to the hotel that night. So now we're getting a totally different story that we haven't heard before. I went into the room. We engaged in consensual intercourse. And I choked her with my belt, which we did on occasion,

that she asked me to do. According to Abney, Mona liked rough sex and asked to be choked. This time, however, she accidentally died. There's the mark of the belt buckle on her neck. I mean, that's how much force was used, was that there was a belt buckle mark left on her neck. So clearly, this wasn't an accident. We had finally backed him into a corner where he realized he couldn't maneuver anymore and

he had to come up with some kind of an explanation. This is the only thing he could come up with. Okay, I was there. Okay, it is my DNA because we had consensual intercourse. And yes, I did call off my wife's death, but it was an accident. When detectives start asking questions, Ebony realizes he hasn't covered all his bases. What about the fact that her credit cards were missing, her ring was missing, her keys were missing, her cash was missing, things like that? What did he do with those things?

He'd forgotten about those. He just had that deer in the headlights look, like, uh-oh, I didn't cover that one. He was in the hot seat at that point. And yeah, we had him. We had him. 56-year-old Wilbert Abney Jr., seen here last year, will take the witness stand tomorrow in his first-degree murder trial. Wilbert Abney never gets the deal he angled so hard for.

Instead he is indicted for murder and faces a potential life stretch in prison. He planned to kill his wife. He did it for the insurance money and he did it because he had a girlfriend. Katie Swart prosecutes the case against Wilbert Abney. In this case you had the DNA that finally put this defendant, Mr. Abney, in the hotel room back in 1978. Because up to that point he had denied being there, having sex with her. He lied through his teeth back in 1978 that he hadn't been there, that he hadn't had sex with her. He lied through his teeth back in 1978 that he hadn't been there, that he hadn't had sex with her. And so he lied back then. Why do you lie? Because

you're covering something up. At trial, Abney sticks to his story. Mona's death was an accident. He came up with the story of the erotic sex where they were having this kinky sort of sex and it was an accidental strangulation. The fact that in the back of the neck you could see the belt buckle and it was like that's not giving anybody pleasure to leave such an impression. The jury doesn't buy Abney's story. Unfortunately for Mr. Abney he had told different stories at various points in this case and then I think his credibility just didn't weigh

much with the jury. After four days of trial he is found guilty and sentenced to 28 years in prison. Everything came right back to me but it brought back quite a few memories and some pain and some, um, some of the heartache. He needed to pay for this, you know. He took her life. She was a young, beautiful woman who had everything going for herself. And, um, for her life to be taken like that. It's not fair, not right. For cold case detectives, the verdict means one more case is closed. One more picture can be taken off the wall. Unfortunately, too many faces remain watching

and waiting for their day in court. There's really no big celebration or big defining moment that ends the investigation. It's just, okay, you got all these others sitting here that need to be worked on, you're demanding to be worked on. Wilbert Abney filed an appeal in 2008. It was denied. And he was additionally denied parole. His release date is scheduled for August 24th, 2023.

He'll be 73 years old. Cold Case Files the Podcast is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delemater. Our associate producer is Julie McGruder. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis.

You can find me on Twitter at Brooke Giddings or Instagram at Brooke the podcaster. Check out more Cold Case Files at aetv.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at AETV.com slash real crime. Hi, I'm Stacey Schroeder. On my podcast, I share candid updates from my personal life, chat with some of my best friends about what's going on in our lives, give commentary on the latest pop culture headlines, and sometimes deep dive into random topics I'm obsessed with, like human design.

It's a bit all over the place, but that's how I like it. And you will too. Listen to my podcast Dossie wherever you get your podcasts.