Cold Case Files - REOPENED: Caught in the Mail

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

A brutal murder and suspected sexual assault of a 13-year-old goes cold... until 22 years later when detectives turn their attention to untested DNA from the crime scene. NOCD: Go to nocd.com and schedule a free 15-minute call with their team. 

On November 12, 1982, a man stepped out into the alley behind his work. It was a freezing Seattle night, but he had to cross the alley to deposit the garbage in the dumpster outside. Plus, taking the garbage out gave him a short break and some fresh air. Unfortunately, he got more than a quick break on this particular trip to the dumpster. In the alley, he came across a cardboard box that held what he first believed was a mannequin. It wasn't, though. So he called the Seattle police, and Sergeant Joe Sanford responded. He said that he noticed in the trash box that he'd seen a foot. And I think, as I remember, he thought it was a doll for a minute until he did a double take. No, that's a real

person there. Of course, he immediately called the police. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. Detective Dan Engel accompanied Sergeant Sanford when they reported to the alley to investigate the scene. And it wasn't pretty. What had been mistaken for a mannequin, or a doll doll was actually the body of a teenage girl, dumped in a cardboard box. This is Detective Engel. She was in the large box, and then there were other boxes, smaller boxes, placed on top as if to cover the body.

The investigators tried to gather as much information as they could about the teenage murder victim, like when and where she had been killed. And that started with some indicators on her body itself. Here's Sergeant Sanford to explain. Well, I seen that little girl obviously appeared to be in full rigor, which kind of tells you that she was killed somewhere else and brought there. When Sergeant Sanford mentions rigor, he means rigor mortis, which is a term that describes a dead body when the joints and muscles go completely stiff. Rigor mortis usually sets in a few hours after death, and it would be extremely difficult to get a body into a box after that point. That's how the detectives were able to determine that her body must not have gone into rigor

until after she was placed in the box. And that's not all they were able to determine. A forensic team found a plaid bathrobe belt wrapped and knotted tightly around her neck. And on one of her legs, a suspicious substance pointed to a possible rape. Here's Detective Engel. There appeared to be semen on the inside of one of her upper legs. So there was certainly sexual activity, and in all likelihood, it was in fact a sexual assault.

The team took samples of the substance and tagged it as evidence. Near the body, they found more evidence. A white plastic bag with an ID inside. The victim's name was Christine Sumstead. She was 13 years old and lived not far from the alley where her body was found. But when investigators looked into her home life, they found that it wasn't exactly surprising for Christine to disappear for days at a time. Here's Sergeant Sanford again. I won't say she's a runaway. She just didn't stay at home every night. She had been

a reported runaway several times, but I think so many times that the family quit reporting her as a runaway. Christine's family told the investigators that they hadn't seen her since she left for school, two days before her body was found. She could have been missing all that time, and no one even thought to look for her. The investigation then turned to Christine's friends, both for information and for potential suspects. Here's Detective Engel again. I always felt that it was more than likely somebody that she knew and in fact ran with. We had polygraphs set up on a number of occasions for several of our friends, and they all passed their polygraph. Assuming the results of the polygraph had been accurate,

the detectives tried to reconstruct Christine's evening, looking for other potential suspects. They didn't have much luck, though. The only person that was even seen in the area was a neighborhood kid named John Athen. His family was friends with Christine's family, and at 14, he didn't jump out as much of a suspect. Still, investigators asked questions about him. Here's Sergeant Sanford again.

He had been seen pushing a cart around the neighborhood, a hand truck with a large box on it. And I sent a detective out to talk to him. He's interviewed. He said, yes, in fact, he was there, that he had gone out and stolen some firewood, and he was wheeling it to his house. That was Detective Engel. He and the other investigators thought that the firewood story sounded strange.

However, after checking with John Athen's family, it seemed that his story checked out. Here's Detective Engel again. They did, in fact, have a wood-burning freestanding fireplace, and they did use that. In fact, other people told us that they had stolen firewood in the past. So it became a perfectly logical explanation. The information about John Athen was added into the case notes along with all the other

interviews that hadn't led anywhere. It seemed like the investigation was reaching a standstill and the investigators were running out of leads. It was real frustrating, yeah. Real frustrating. And the longer the case went, the more frustrating it got. Despite the detective's frustration, no new leads or evidence materialized, and the case came to a dead end. In January of 1991, the murder of Christine Sumstead was officially retired without being closed and was added to the cold case files. This episode is brought to you by NoCD.

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NoCD. NoCD is a virtual therapy partner for OCD with licensed therapists who specialize in OCD, so they understand intrusive thoughts. Every NoCD therapist is trained in Exposure and Response Prevention, or ERP. It's a type of therapy that was specifically designed for OCD, and it's considered the gold standard treatment. NoCD also accepts many major insurance plans and offers always-on support between sessions so you're never alone. To learn more about therapy with NoCD, go to NoCD.com and schedule a free 15-minute call with their team. That's NoCD.com to learn more and book a free 15-minute call. For over a decade, Christine's file sat on a shelf collecting dust.

But in 2002, something happened that brought new life into the case. Two veteran detectives, Dick Gagnon and Greg Mikesell, decided to dive into Seattle's cold cases. And they didn't take their new project lightly. Detectives Gagnon and Mikesell worked full-time on over 300 unsolved murders. One of their main focuses was female victims. This is Detective Mikesell. Female victims of homicide are oftentimes sexually assaulted. That is more likely to yield DNA evidence.

And with DNA technology advancing rapidly, we felt that would be a good place to start. Out of all the cases that the detectives reviewed, they found 65 that had preserved DNA evidence that was unable to be tested when the crime was committed. Among those cases was Christine Sumstead. The semen sample that had been collected from her leg was sent to the Seattle Crime Lab, where it was tested by forensic scientist and DNA specialist Beverly Himmick. I got a great profile on this case. I had a single unknown male individual, and at that point, we really had no one to compare this profile to. Collecting DNA and creating a profile is useful in identifying a suspect, but it's only half of the process. Collecting a sample from a likely suspect and comparing it to that profile is the other half. So, in Christine's case,

investigators needed a suspect for the DNA evidence to be useful. Their first step was to compare the DNA sample found on Christine's body to all the DNA profiles logged in state and national databases. But that search turned up no matches. So the detectives were back at the same dead end the original investigators had faced. Gagnon and Mikesell looked in the case file for people who might be able to help identify potential suspects. And so by talking to people, the name John Athens kept coming up. And John had been looked at by the detectives early in the investigation. And we talked to someone else, and they said, well, yeah, everybody knows that John Athens did it. And it seemed that everybody knew it but us.

The cold case detectives reviewed John Athens' statement from 1982. There was no apparent smoking gun, but there were several little things that made the detective suspicious. Here's Detective Mikesell. He had been seen in the block where her body was found the night she was last seen, undoubtedly the night she was murdered. And he was pushing a cart or a wheelbarrow with a box in it. That to me was quite significant that he was at the scene of where her body was found with a conveyance that could have transported a body. John Athen had told the original investigators that he had stolen some firewood and his family confirmed. Detective Gagnon had his doubts though.

He told the detective at a time that he was getting firewood and if you look at the area it's quite a distance from his home. Up he'll climb to going back home and John was not any type of an Adonis. He was a little short fat kid. I can't see John pushing a cart full of firewood up that hill. As a former short fat kid, I think it's pretty unfair for someone's endurance to be judged by their body size. Though I can acknowledge it is suspicious that he was pushing around a box in a wheelbarrow the same evening that a girl was murdered and her body dumped in a box. I also imagine it would be easier for anyone to push a heavy wheelbarrow down a hill with a body inside it than up a hill with firewood.

Either way, the detective's suspicions were not evidence and needed to find a way to compare John Athens' DNA to the profile collected from Christine's body. Here's Detective Gagnon. He's in Jersey, we're in Seattle. There's no way we're going to be able to go down there and try to get some surreptitious DNA sample from him, you know, because the department's not going to pay a couple of grand to have us go down there. I mean, on TV, they spend money like it's, you know, water. Around here, you better have some reason to go over there.

You better come back with something. The detectives considered the ways they could get John Athens' DNA. They could fly across the country and follow him, hoping he discarded something with his DNA on it. That option wasn't cost-effective though, and definitely not within the budget of the Seattle Police Department. Like all of us do when we're strapped for cash, they decided to get creative. Detective Mike Selengagnon shared their frustration with another detective, Linda Diaz. She says, well, what if we send him a letter? I said, Linda, I'd love to send him a letter, but what do I send him a letter saying?

I'm a Seattle police detective, I want your samples, lick this and send it back to me. She said, well, let me work on that, let me get back to you. I put weeks of thought into it, thinking what would entice someone to send me a letter back. And then I thought, well, he had traffic tickets. And I came up with the class action lawsuit idea. Her letter idea was simple, but also maybe clever enough to work. She proposed sending a letter from an imaginary law firm, offering a refund for people who may have overpaid the city of Seattle for traffic violations. The idea was that if John Affin returned the letter,

he would likely lick the envelope before mailing it, leaving his DNA on the seal. There were some pretty specific details that had to be taken care of for Detective Diaz's plan to work. They had to make the letter look credible. So they included John Affin's actual ticket history. And I had a self-addressed return envelope and I went and had those run through the bulk rate stamp machine because I figured a law firm, if they were doing mass mailings, would send that out so that all he had

to do was lick the envelope and mail it back. There were several things that could prevent the idea from being successful, like using another method for dampening the seal other than licking it, or he could also completely discard the letter. Either way, this plan would only cost the price of postage and printing a letter. So they went forward with the plan. I'm reading this thing. At first I thought it was real. Then I realized it's for a letter. I says, this is great. She says, you think it'll work? I said, listen, we sent it to him. We're out 74 cents, two stamps, you know? The detective sent the letter and waited.

A few weeks later, Detective Diaz called Detective Gagnon. Phone rings. It's Linda. Dick, the letter's here. I mean mean she sounded like she just won the lottery it appeared that john affen had licked the envelope so it was sent to dr himmick and the cryob lab to test for dna she began by cutting off a small portion of the sealed envelope the actual two sealed pieces are teased apart after they've been cut up into several pieces. And really all the cells that are deposited by the saliva just trickle down in the solution, and from that point on you can extract the DNA right out of each cell. Dr. Himmick was able to develop a complete male DNA profile from the envelope seal.

The next step was to compare the profile that she extracted from the envelope to the one created from the DNA on Christine's leg. Every single part of the profile was matching, and so I knew that I had the person who donated that semen was the same person who licked that envelope. The estimated probability of selecting another unrelated individual in the U.S. population was 1 in 59 quadrillion. That's a match. The person who licked the envelope was the same person who had left the DNA on Christine's body. Though, at this point, the identity of the person who contributed the DNA could not be confirmed.

Detective Himmick called to share the news with Detective Gagnon. She says, Dick, I've got good news for you. I can't tell you who licked the envelope, but I can tell you one thing. Whoever licked the envelope was also the donor of that semen 22 years ago. So at that point, we knew we had our guy. We had the right guy. And at that point, that's when we went to the brass and asked for money to go back and continue the investigation.

Having justified the expense of traveling to New Jersey from Seattle, the detectives were able to visit John Athen in person. He was on a construction job site where he worked tobacco. The detectives were cautious when approaching their suspect. Here's Detective Mikesell. The worst approach is to immediately confront a suspect, to challenge him, to accuse him. The detectives didn't want to spook Athen and lose the opportunity to talk with him. You have to be cautious because if you get too aggressive, too confrontational, the magic word is I want an attorney and the party's over. And our reason for being there is to get a statement from him,

any kind of statement, lock him into something. This guy was as cold and calculated as they come. Maybe we weren't going to get it solved. It was like the epitome of innocence that had been preyed upon. This is a case that has no evidence. We didn't have DNA. We didn't have fingerprints. Step inside the court of law

with the new true crime podcast, American Justice. We realize we have four men who answered the same ad for a job on a farm. My brother Ralph went to interview and he was never seen again. A podcast that explores impactful crimes and reveals how our justice system works. You have to consider that there are more possibilities than one. And sometimes how it doesn't.

We have to find whoever this monster is. Go in depth into chilling cases and their conclusions in this new true crime series. You just have a pit in your stomach thinking how many people are we going to find. Go in depth into chilling cases and their conclusions in this new true crime series. You just have a pit in your stomach thinking how many people are we going to find. New episodes of American Justice are available every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. After introducing themselves, the detectives asked John Athen to join them in their car for a few questions. Knowing that a semen was found on Christine, the detectives tried to get John Athen to admit they had been sexually involved. This is Detective Gagnon again.

I said, who was having sex with her back then? What do you mean? I says, she was sexually active. Who was having sex with her? I don't know. Come on, John, you know who was. I mean, up in Magnolia, everybody knew everybody. The older guys? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, okay, how about you? Me? Yeah, did you ever have sex with Kristen? Oh, man.

He says, I never, you know. Yeah, I never even kissed her. Having sex with someone is making you a murderer. But in this case, by denying all these things, it shows that there's a prima facie case that he was there and there's something he's hiding. John Athen eventually asked for an attorney, but it seemed like he was too late. He was charged with the murder of Christine Sumstead and returned to Washington to stand trial. During the months leading up to the trial, the defense attorneys filed a motion to have the DNA evidence excluded

because of the method the detectives used to collect it. Without that evidence, the case would be dismissed. The defense argued that Washington laws barred non-attorneys from posing as actual attorneys. The prosecutor, Steve Fogg, was the one to make the case that the DNA evidence was obtained legally. They didn't act as an attorney. They sent him a letter inviting his participation in a class action, but they didn't file a class action. They didn't represent him in court. Cops frequently will, you know, sell, you know, dope to somebody on the street

and then immediately arrest that person and recover the dope. Those cases don't get dismissed, and they shouldn't be dismissed, and we felt like the same logic would obtain in this case. After hearing the arguments from both sides, the judge ruled in favor of the prosecution, allowing the DNA evidence to be presented in court. Here's Tim Bradshaw from the prosecutor's office. We know what has been argued by a zealous counsel on his behalf.

But in the end, we know that when he voluntarily licked that envelope, he sealed his fate. In January of 2004, the case went before a jury. And after 12 days of deliberation, they were able to deliver a verdict. We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of the crime of murder in a second degree. Guilty. John Athen was found guilty 22 years after Christine Sumstead was murdered. He was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison, to the dismay of Christine's mother. The person here really ruined a lot of people's lives. We're tired of being scared, and what he did was really unspeakable.

He's ruined my whole family. The detectives were glad there was a guilty verdict. Here's Detective Mikesell. He's been held accountable. I would like to see him admit responsibility, take responsibility. I'd like the family to know that he takes responsibility. I don't know that we'll ever hear that from John Athen. And here's Detective Gagnon.

We did our job, and it was a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, and like I say, but there's probably other Christmas umstads here in this vault whose cases have to be looked at, too. In 2011, John Athen went before the Indeterminate Sentence Review Board, the board that has the ability to grant parole. The board determined that Athen had made significant behavioral and cognitive changes and wasn't likely to re-offend. After having served seven years of his sentence, he was granted parole. I couldn't find any further information

on John Athen. I'd like to think that means he's been rehabilitated and become a law-following citizen. And a 14-year-old boy that committed a horrible crime has learned his lesson. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our associate producer is Julie Magruder, and 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. Check out more Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. 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. Pluto TV is a place for movie fans like me and TV fans like me. We'll be right back. Come on. Criminal Minds, solving crime after bedtime. Whatever you love to watch, Pluto TV makes it easy with thousands of free movies and shows. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.