Cold Case Files - REOPENED: Snatched

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

A six-year-old girl goes missing from her backyard. The only witness is a five-year-old, who says a strange man took the missing girl. Who was this man? And why was the girl taken?Sponsors:Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. 

In 1992, Corrine Goofsifson was six years old. She had spiky blonde hair, which earned her the nickname Punky. Corrine was three feet ten inches tall and weighed just under 40 pounds. On September 6th, she went outside to play with her friend Lindsey. That's what kids did in the 90s. Her yard had a fence around it, though I'm not sure why. Because on that same day, Corinne went missing. She'd been taken, and no one knew who the culprit was or why they had chosen Corinne. Police knew time was important in a kidnapping case. The longer it took to find the perpetrator, the less likely they were to find the child unharmed. Two days later, Corinne's body was found, discarded like garbage in a parking lot.

Fear and anger and despair filled the community, and the police were under so much pressure to find the killer. Investigators think it's possible that Corinne had been taken by her uncle, but could it have been someone else? From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. I'm Brooke, and here's the esteemed Bill Curtis with the classic case, Snatched. It was a quiet morning. There wasn't much happening in the northeast district of Edmonton,

which is the district that we were working. This call comes in. It was about 10.22 that we were actually dispatched. Dave Bittman is a constable for the Edmonton Police Service. On a Sunday morning, he and his partner roll to Rundle Park Village, where a six-year-old named Corrine Punky Gustafson has gone missing. My first thoughts were, come on now, it's a quiet morning. Perhaps this little girl went to the local convenience store with another friend and maybe there's

trouble at home and she didn't want to go home right away. Unit 148, or correction, 149 is the second unit in from the corner here and this is the Gustafson residence. Bittman arrives at the Gustafson home around 10.30 a.m. I could see people inside. I went up to the front door and knocked on the door, and there I met Ray Gustafson. Gustafson tells Bittman Corrine was outside playing with her friend Lindsay,

who reported that a man had taken Corrine. As Bittman takes Ray Gustafson's statement, his wife, Corrine's mother, Karen, arrives at home. I was really upset. I was bawling. I was going to just go find her. I was always worried about them finding her. Between her mother coming home with the look of sheer terror on her face and the information that we'd gleaned thus far, I had thought in my own mind at that time that this was a bona fide abduction. To get a better handle on what he's dealing with,

Bittman walks to the back of the house where the girls were playing. This suspect walks up, comes right up to them, and essentially just grabs onto Corinne, takes her in his arms, and then turns 180 degrees and heads directly back towards that walkway. Lindsay is unable to provide a clear description of the abductor,

but Bittman gets what information he can out of the five-year-old. We come around the corner and ask our witness, point directly the route that this fellow took. Point to us, tell us, show us. And she walks us again through this little walkway between the units, 147 and 148. About 50 feet down the walkway,

Bittman notices a dampened patch of mud and a footprint. The most prominent footwear impression that was inlaid in this mud appeared to be that of a sports shoe like somebody playing soccer or baseball would wear, like a cleat. Bittman takes a sketch of the impression, and a door-to-door search of the neighborhood begins. Corrine's family is staying pretty much shut in their townhouse now with the curtains closed. A media blitz kicks in. By nightfall, most of Edmonton, it seems, is searching for Corrine Gustafson. Meanwhile, a family waits.

I was banging my head on the walls. I thought it was my fault. And I was hoping that she would come home. I kept on looking outside. Maybe she went to a different friend's house. Or maybe she just went for a walk. And I just kept on looking outside and she didn't come home. RCMP were called to the Sherwood Park Industrial Area at a quarter to five. A passerby found the body in this storage lot behind a trucking firm. The owner of the company said the body was that of a young girl.

As we pull up out front, you know, there's a helicopter. I can't remember if it was landing or taking off. There were police cars everywhere. There was media everywhere. A lot of things were going through our mind. We knew that the eyes and ears of the city were on this investigation and were going to demand answers.

Two days after Corrine Gustafson disappeared, detectives Terry Alm and Al Sauve arrive at a trucking yard just outside Edmonton's city limits. The body of a six-year-old girl lies in the mud near the back of the lot. If I had to guess,

I'd say Corrine's body was probably somewhere, I'd say right about here. Well, we see the body of a young child laying face down in the mud with their head slightly turned to the side.

It is not immediately apparent to the detectives how Corrine Gustafson died. It does appear, however, that she was killed somewhere else and then dumped among the flatbeds. She had been redressed. The way in which her panties were on, the way in which her pants were on, the way in which her coat was put on, all led us to believe that she was killed and raped somewhere else.

Not far from the body, investigators noticed tire tracks and cleat marks similar to those found at the Gustafson home. The first responding RCMP members that responded here immediately saw the tire tracks and the footprints, the marks in the mud south of Corrine's body, The CMP members that responded here immediately saw the tire tracks and the footprints, the marks in the mud south of Corrine's body, and they felt that they could be related to the crime. So right away, they identified them. They knew they had to be protected. With the evidence preserved, Alm and Sauvé take stock of the scene and try to piece together the movements of a killer.

So it looked as if a suspect vehicle had come in on the west side of the lot, pulled in just south of where Corrine's body was, and did kind of a 180, backed up, and then started in a westerly direction again. And then as he got out of his vehicle, he left a bunch of footprints around the vehicle that's why we we theorize that he stopped the vehicle there probably removed Corrine from the vehicle dumped her underneath that the the trailer unit and then back to the car an autopsy establishes that Corrine was most likely smothered to death. The ME also discovers a single pubic hair

on the victim's left ankle. But it was such a small piece that the DNA technology at the time didn't lend itself to developing a profile from that. So the hope was that as DNA technology advanced that we'd eventually get a profile from the partial root bulb on that pubic hair. Corrine Gustafson is dead, a city is stunned,

and a family is left with nothing but its grief. It was really hard. I just wanted to go and get the guy that done it. I just wanted justice to be served. I wanted him caught. No words can take away the pain or erase Corrine Gustafson's tragic ending from our minds. Her death has had a tremendous impact on the entire city. There's just this air of the surreal when you go and you see

what was a beautiful, lively, vivacious six-year-old girl, a pretty little girl lying in a coffin, and she looks like a doll. It's just this very strange feeling to see something like that. It just doesn't make sense. David Staples is a reporter for the Edmonton Journal. On September 14th, he covers the funeral of Corrine Punky Gustafson. This case, it scared the hell out of Edmonton. It changed the city forever. People altered their behavior. People in this city used to feel safe sending their kids to the playground and

sending their kids to school on their own. And that changed after this crime. From the car parked in the parking lot over here to coming around the corner to where Lindsay and Corrine were playing, you know, that just takes a matter of, what, 30 seconds there and back. It's been eight days since Gustafson was taken from her home, assaulted and murdered.

As the city watches, two rookie homicide detectives, Terry Alm and Al Sauve, lead a team of detectives in the hunt for her killer. One of their first persons of interest, the victim's uncle, Ron Davies. Ron became the family spokesperson. And a lot of people, a lot of police officers didn't like the way that Ron was reacting.

And there were a number of detectives who really investigated Ron to the nth degree. Then they showed up at the house and asked for DNA samples from everybody. So, you know, I gave them that, no questions asked. Not realizing that at that point I was their number one suspect due to the fact that she was in a trucking yard, I drove trucks. Davy's possible link to the trucking yard is enough for investigators to bring him in

and push him with some hard questions. After a while, it got to the point where I said enough was enough. Then the RCMP, which is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, they took me in for an interview, and right away out of the officer's mouth was, you know you killed your niece. Let's just sign this confession. Let's get it over with so everybody can get on with their lives. I said, the next time you say that I killed my niece,

I'm going to hit you. I'll drop you where you stand. In the city, in the newsroom, in the police station, Terry Alm's being bombarded. It's the uncle, isn't it? The uncle did it. In the newsroom, we hear, well, there's this uncle. He's probably the guy. Speculation builds that Ron Davies might be the killer. Terry Ulm, however, is not so sure.

I had a lot of dealings with the family, and I had seen Ron being interviewed. I spent a lot of time with him and the family, and I guess it was more than anything. It was just from looking at all the evidence we had, knowing, coming to know Ron as I did, I just didn't feel he was involved. Alm pushes the investigation away from Davies, back towards a reexamination of the evidence and a burgeoning stack of leads. And the boxes here represent probably a third of the paperwork in this file.

There were over 5,000 tips. When you're faced with hundreds of tips coming in on a daily basis and you're looking for, you know, the needle in the haystack, as it were, it becomes very, very challenging, very daunting, almost overwhelming. Detectives plow through literally thousands of tips, turning up nothing of substance. Meanwhile, a city grows impatient. It was the biggest, most expensive, most intensive homicide investigation in the history of Edmonton, and also the most anguished.

And it was anguished. And it was anguished because of this tidal wave of information coming in. And some of the homicide detectives are looking at this guy saying, he's just sitting there shuffling papers, like, get out there on the street, Alm, and solve this thing. There was a lot of internal criticism of Terry Alm. Terry Alm is on the spot. In the hallways of the Edmonton Detective Division,

he earns the nickname Ofer. It was Terry's first file as the primary investigator. Someone at one of the meetings mentioned the fact that he was Ofer 1, having been assigned one file and zero solves. And kiddingly they called him Ofer, but it stung because he's also a sensitive guy and it hurt his feelings. You know, as the days and weeks and months go by, you often wonder, you often doubt, you know, have self-doubt as to whether you're up to the challenge or not. And, you know, you look inside yourself and say,

you know, is this too much for me to handle? In the weeks immediately after Corrine Gustafson was killed, 50 detectives worked the case. Two years after that, the number is down to just a few. Then in 1996, Sauvé leaves Homicide. The only thing that made me regret leaving the unit was the fact that the file was unfinished and leaving Terry behind, obviously, because I knew he was never going to give up. More after a short break.

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national average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. brutally assaulted, and died from injuries related to the attack. Authorities believe that her uncle, Ron Davies, was the perpetrator of the crime. Four years later, when the DNA evidence collected from Corinne was examined using new technology, it turns out that Ron Davies wasn't the one that assaulted and killed his niece. The DNA they found matched a different man. Eventually, the team was pared down, and pared down and pared down again, so that eventually I was the only one working on the case. By January of 2000, Terry Alm has been working the Gustafson case for more than seven years,

nearly the last four by himself. We had so many tips and so many suspects that required more work, but how could you separate the wheat from the chaff as far as these tips went? So we decided to have all of Corrine's clothing and the swabs reexamined. Alm hopes new technology will be able to identify and develop a usable DNA profile in the case. He sends items of evidence to a private lab in North Carolina. One year later, Alm gets a call. You know, he had asked me, he says, well, you know, does Corrine have any boyfriends?

And I said, well, she was only six years old. And then he said, well, then I've got your guy. The unknown profile is uploaded into Canada's National DNA Data Bank and hits to a man named Clifford Slay, a convicted sex offender and a name Terry Alm is familiar with. Clifford Slay had come to our attention in May of 93 when he had sexually assaulted a young teenage girl. And he was investigated at the time.

His family had alibied him, and he was sort of put on the back burner. Slade was one of thousands of suspects looked at during the 10-year Gustafson investigation. Now he takes center stage and is asked to explain why his semen was found on the clothes of a six-year-old. We're not here to pass judgment on you. We're only here to deal with the truth.

You're not, uh, you're not a stupid man, Cliff. And it's a tough situation. At 10.20 p.m., the questioning of Clifford Slay, a suspect in the murder of six-year-old Corrine Gustafson, begins. The man who built the case against Slay, Detective Terry Alm, has retired. Detective Ralph Godfrey handles the interrogation. We knew from our background research that once Clifford was put into,

or painted into a corner where he thought the gig was up and the deck was stacked against him, that he would tell the truth. Slay is informed that DNA testing has matched his genetic profile to semen found on the victim's clothes. The next day, the suspect decides he wants to talk.

He is cold and calculated. It's almost a matter of fact. At that point, with us, there are no tears, there is no emotion. I look at what I've done, and there is no emotion I look at what I've done and there is no life to have done with me. I guess I'm not really prepared for what's going to happen but I've done a lot of thinking. I've come to terms that this is something I have to own up to. Slade tells Godfrey that in September of 1992 he was having marital problems with his common-law wife. And he wanted to punish her.

And potentially he wanted to punish her. And potentially he wanted to locate her daughter and assault her. Slay could not locate his wife's daughter. Instead, he left the apartment and got into his brother-in-law's car. I had plans of just going down to the Mohawk station just for a pack of cigarettes. He went out, and it would appear he went out on the prowl or on the hunt. I was so very angry. I was pretty drunk.

I was actually going to turn around. I turned into these apartment townhouses. Slay says he pulled into Rundle Park Village and noticed six-year-old Corrine Gustafson playing with her friend. I'd seen these two little girls playing in this fence area. I made up my mind that I was going to grab one. And it just happened to be the one closest to the fence.

And he tucked her under his arm and put her in his vehicle and took off. I'd taken the little girl to, I don't know, there was just this road that I followed. I drove down this road. I mean, the thoughts were there, but I didn't want to do anything. I just wanted to kind of drive as far as I could on this road, drop off and just leave. But when I realized that there was no traffic in Missouri, it seemed very secluded, you know, I just had to put it on my self. I just had a sense of her.

I don't know, I'm using terminology. It's a rape her. Slay says he raped Corrine for some ten minutes. When he finished, Slay claims Corrine was still alive and that he let her go. I had taken her out of the car. I took her and I put her on the back end of this part of the tree. I guess the fenders would be to cover the tires.

I sat her on there. We know how she was found. That's very clear how she was found. And that was not true. Slay fails to take responsibility for Corrine's murder. Godfrey believes it to be a calculated move. I think he tried to minimize his involvement. I think he knew the difference between first-degree murder

and second-degree murder and potentially manslaughter, so that his explanation was made to try and fit something less than a first-degree murder conviction. Slay is arrested and booked on a charge of murder. News spreads quickly throughout the city. It's an announcement that took 10 years to make. Police have finally made an arrest in the murder of 6-year-old Corrine Punky Gustafson. Today, a judge of order was issued for 40-year-old Clifford Matthew Slay.

There was jubilation in Edmonton. I mean, people were so relieved that this person had been caught, but we were also left with that age-old question, who could do such a crime? Who is this guy? On May 12, 2005, the people get an answer. Clifford Slay is charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault. Punky's family is hoping to finally find out exactly what happened 13 years ago.

It was every person within the city of Edmonton who saw a six-year-old child, an absolutely innocent little girl who was playing just a few feet from her back door and was abducted by a total stranger, raped and smothered to death. For that reason, it hit you, it hit me, and it hit every one of us on a personal level. Jason Track is the Crown Prosecutor for Alberta and responsible for trying Clifford Slay for first-degree murder. He made the admission of abducting this child. He also made the admission of sexually assaulting her.

We looked at all of the evidence, and we believe that to a degree of 100% certainty, not beyond a reasonable doubt, but to 100% certainty, she was dead when he left her. As part of his case, track plays Slay's confession in open court. I guess I raped her, you know, but I didn't kill her. I was very surprised when I heard that she had died. It was putrid to listen to the tape of his confession

and to hear this stuff coming from his mouth and trying to downplay his culpability in this crime. The tape plays exactly as the prosecution had intended, Slay's words appearing to be both callous and calculating. If he was capable of empathy and remorse, he never would have committed such a crime. But he's such a botched human being that he was able to do such an act.

The jury deliberates for one day and returns the verdict Tracht requested. Slay is found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life in prison. Under Canadian law, however, he will be eligible to apply for parole in 25 years. Clifford Slay's arrest and conviction is front-page news in Edmonton. The man most responsible for putting Slay behind bars, Detective Terry Alm.

This was a case of someone dedicating more than a decade of his life to solving this crime, and it was in the end, it was his dedication that solved it. It was his sticking with it, going back over the evidence that allowed the police to figure out, we'd better take another look at this DNA evidence or we'll never solve this thing. That was Terry Alm.

You couldn't ask for a better result. I mean, I would have liked to have come a lot earlier, not just for myself, but for everybody concerned. And if in some way that my work that I did on this file contributed in the end result, I guess I can take some comfort in that. Thank you all for coming here today with us. It's been 13 years since we said goodbye to Punky. On September 4, 2005, detectives Albe and Sauve attend a memorial service. Corrine Punky Gustafson's family sends up more than 300 balloons

in memory of the six-year-old. When everybody's at work, if I'm at home by myself, I'll come out here and then I'll sit with her for a while, just to be beside her, so she can know that, you know, I still love her. And I'll see her soon. She's our angel, watching over us. After a DNA match, Clifford Slay was convicted for the murderous assault on Corinne.

He was sentenced to 25 years. When the trial was over, Slay tried to apologize to the little girl's family for his actions. If you drop a glass bottle and it breaks, apologizing doesn't really fix anything at all because the bottle's still broken. The hearts of Corinne's family were broken very much in the same way. An apology didn't bring their little girl back. And so in response, the family told Slay, don't cry for us. We don't need your remorse. Cold Case Files is written and hosted by Brooke Giddings. Produced by Scott Brody, McKamey Lynn, and Steve Delamater. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Original music by Blake Maples.

We're distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com and by downloading the A&E app. I'm Brett. And I'm Alice. And together we host a weekly true crime podcast called The Prosecutors. In every episode, we bring our unique perspective as full-time prosecutors to the most famous and debated true crime mysteries. Whether it's Maura Murray, Scott Peterson, or the Delphi murders, Brett and I dig deep to bring you details you won't hear anywhere else.

Our podcast is about more than just a story. We will walk you through the legal problems lurking behind every case, breaking down the complexities of the criminal justice system with humor and a personal touch. And it's not just true crime. We bring the same training and approach we've learned as prosecutors to classic mysteries like the Dyatlov Pass incident and the ghost ship Mary Celeste. So if you're looking for a true crime podcast with a different point of view, The Prosecutors is the one for you. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.