Cold Case Files - The Closers

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

A woman drops her daughter off at daycare then disappears. Without any evidence or clues, Los Angeles investigators have no leads until an anonymous tipster gives the detectives a name that may crack the case. Check out our great sponsors! Listen and subscribe now to The Trials of Frank Carson on LATimes.com or listen and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts! Grove: Go to Grove.co/coldcase to choose a FREE gift with your first order of $30 or more! Klaviyo: To get started with a free trial of Klaviyo - visit Klaviyo.com/coldcase  Scott's Cheap Flights: Join for free at Scottscheapflights.com/coldcase and never overpay for flights again! Progressive: Get a quote today at Progressive.com and see why 4 out of 5 new auto customers recommend Progressive!

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence. Use your best judgment. Elaine Graham met her husband Stephen in 1976 while working at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. She had just moved there after completing nursing school in Connecticut. Stephen was an intern at the time, but he graduated and became a doctor. He and Elaine married in 1979.

They had what seemed like the perfect life. They honeymooned in Europe for several weeks and then came home and worked at their respective jobs. Elaine, a nurse at the hospital, and Stephen, a doctor at his own practice across the street. Two years later, in 1981, they had a daughter, Elise. And six months after that, the family moved into their dream home. Elaine loved learning, so she enrolled in classes at California State University. During the spring semester of 1983, Elaine had classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

On Tuesdays, Elaine's mother-in-law looked after two-year-old Elise. On Thursdays, Elise was cared for by a babysitter who lived close to the college campus. On April 17, 1983, St. Patrick's Day, Elaine dressed herself in jeans and a plaid shirt. She filled the diaper bag and her own backpack and took her daughter to the babysitter's house. Elaine left Elise with the babysitter around 9.30 a.m., promising to be back around 2 p.m. when her classes ended.

Elise waited for her mother to come pick her up, but 2 o'clock passed, and then three, and then four. Elaine had been murdered. But Elise was too young to understand why her mommy would never come pick her up again. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. I'm Brooke. And here's the spectacular Bill Curtis with a classic case, The Closers. This is the archive center for police department records, the murder cases that have occurred

in the past. Most of them are over here. Cold case detective Rick Jackson and his partner Tim Marsha are taking a stroll through history. Row after row, shelf after shelf of boxes, each containing evidence from an unsolved murder, each waiting for its own hero. Cold cases affect you a lot differently, at least they do me, and I know they affect him differently than a fresh case. When you come over here, you don't get,

you know, you look and you kind of shake your head, but you don't get too wrapped up into it until you actually pull out the book and you start going through the photographs, you know, of the crime scene photos, and the ones that get you are looking at the pictures of the victim while he or she was alive. On April 19, 2002,

Jackson and Marsha pull out a murder almost 20 years cold. I remembered the case happening because it was one of those cases that just, if you read about it, it just stuck with you, and it was just of those cases that just, if you read about it, it just stuck with you. It was just such a tragedy. The victim's name is Elaine Graham. The first act in her tragedy unfolded in the early morning hours of March 18, 1983. I'd been working detective headquarters, and I was on the morning watch, roughly midnight

to eight. And on that particular night I was working the missing person's desk. At about 4 a.m., Detective Bill Buck catches a call from Sherman Oaks, a suburb north of L.A. On the line is Dr. Stephen Graham, who says his wife Elaine has gone missing. Dr. Graham mentioned that his wife had not come home, and he had been checking some locations already and had not heard from her. Graham tells Bach that Elaine left home the previous morning,

traveling in her yellow VW Bug. She dropped off their two-year-old daughter at daycare and headed to classes at Cal State Northridge. By 6 p.m. that evening, Elaine and her VW were nowhere to be found. This itinerary was the biggest red flag that something was the matter because she never picked up her young daughter from daycare. Then you have to start asking, has there been an argument? Are there marital problems? Is there any kind of a history of abuse or drinking or arrests? Dr. Graham tells Detective Buck that nothing in his relationship with Elaine would cause her to leave. He says, look, I know you have to ask me questions about my wife's habits or substance abuse

or drinking. He says, I can assure you that everything is fine with her and we're not having any fights. And that's when he said, if she didn't pick up our daughter, I think she's dead. Buck checks with local hospitals. Then he checks the morgue. Elaine Graham hasn't turned up in either place. Her husband was on duty at Cedars-Sinai Hospital

when Elaine most likely disappeared, making the doctor less of a suspect, but only by a little. Tomorrow arrives with still no signs of Mrs. Graham, and that's when the media gets wind of the story. They've been married four years, have a healthy two-year-old daughter, a nice home, a comfortable life, no serious problems, yet Elaine Graham has vanished. This was one that caught media interest almost from day one when she disappeared. Pete Noyes is a local news reporter. One, you had a doctor working at one of L.A.'s most prominent hospitals, Cedars-Sinai Hospital.

You had a beautiful young mother, and she disappeared one day off the campus of Cal State Northridge. Investigators must find her car, a 1971 pale yellow Volkswagen, much like this one, license number 829KVG. It became one of these mysteries that seemed to build and build and build. For five days, the mystery deepens until a yellow VW surfaces in a parking lot 60 miles away. According to her husband, there is no reason why 29-year-old Elaine Graham would go to Santa Ana. Yet, her yellow Volkswagen Bug was found abandoned in a Santa Ana shopping center late last night. A witness found the car here, saw it the day before.

The morning after, it came, because it was raining, came by and rolled up the windows. So the car we'd seen here, we know it was here on the 17th, the day she disappeared. For more than two hours today, investigators from the LAPD Homicide Bureau, along with detectors from the missing persons unit, looked in the Volkswagen, took fingerprints from every possible spot in and outside the little volkswagen bug paul tippin and leroy orozco head up a team that takes apart the volkswagen we went as far as to do luminol and luminol the interior of the car to

see if there was any blood any evidence that could be obtained through that method and there was nothing. Nothing inside the car tells detectives how it got there or more importantly where its owner might be. On a July morning, Tippin and Orozco arrive at an apartment complex a few blocks from where Elaine Graham's car was recovered. We came to this location after we received information from an anonymous caller that said that we should look into Edmund Marr as a suspect. According to their source, Edmund Marr's sister

has information connecting her brother to the Graham disappearance. When I saw them, I just kind of went, oh, okay, let's get the skinny on this. What do you want to know? She said that Edmund, her brother, had showed up at her house around 5.30 in the evening on the 17th of March. It was more unexpected than anything,

and he was very reserved, almost depressed, and quiet. Kat tells the detectives that her brother has a history of drug abuse and violence. Two days before Elaine Graham disappeared, he was discharged from the Army. And it wasn't a dishonorable discharge, but it was basically, we're letting you go, kind of a discharge. They couldn't

reform him, apparently, because of his drug habits. The day before Elaine Graham disappeared, Edmund Marr showed up at his mother's home in Northridge, just blocks from the campus where Elaine Graham vanished. The following day, and 60 miles down the road, Kat got an unexpected knock on her door.

When I opened my door, my brother was standing there, and he just was like very despondent, just not together, I could tell. His mind was a million miles away. Shortly after Edmund Marr's visit with his sister, he slipped out of the city of Orange. Kat didn't start to suspect anything until news reports filtered in about Elaine Graham.

Late this afternoon, Elaine Graham's husband, Dr. Stephen Graham, told me that friends and neighbors have combined to up their reward money to $15,000. She disappeared from CSUN. Her car's around the corner from my apartment. He shows up on St. Patrick's Day, and he's not himself. I go, something doesn't add up here. Kat Stevenson doesn't believe in coincidences.

Neither do Detectives Tippin and Orozco. To us, it was unique because he was at one location on the 17th where our victim was supposed to go to class. And then looking at where the car was found, the car was within walking distance of this location. Tippin and Orozco run a background check on Marr and find he was recently arrested for armed robbery. The detectives meet with Marr in a state lockup and show him a photo of Elaine Graham. He showed no emotion whatsoever and denied ever knowing her or ever seeing her. The answers provided by Marr leave investigators with more suspicions than answers.

Elaine Graham disappeared on her way to school, and five days later, her car appeared 60 miles away in Santa Ana. The police took a statement from a woman named Kat Stevenson about her brother, Edmund Marr, who had a history of drug abuse and violence. Stevenson said that her brother had visited their mother close to California State University on the day Elaine went missing, and the next day he had shown up at Kat's store,

60 miles away in Santa Ana. Marr had just been arrested for armed robbery. When the police questioned him, Marr denied having any knowledge of what happened to Elaine. And without a body, the case seemed to be going nowhere. Until a hiker provided the detectives with a lead. And started hiking, crossing the creek bed, and then started to climb up into the hill over here. It's Thanksgiving weekend in Southern California,

and Bob Lavin decides to stretch his legs. When I got down about 75 yards, I heard this blood-curdling scream and I rushed back along the trail to see what was happening. A couple hiking runs down the hill towards Levin. And they were halfway down the hill to where I was as I was coming up and said they'd found a skeleton. The couple directs Lavin up the hill to a shaded area. I looked underneath the shrubs and very clearly there was a human skeleton. To the right was a pile of clothing. I was really blown away. The bones are transported to the L.A. County Coroner's Office, where dental records confirm the remains to be those of Elaine Graham, who's been missing now for eight months.

At autopsy, scratch marks are noted on Graham's vertebrae. Tool mark examiner Steve Dowell tries to determine how they might have gotten there. These are actually the vertebrae of Elaine Graham. The defect initially was recognized as a linear or a straight, somewhat straight crack in the bone on the front surface of the bone. Dowell takes a saw and cuts through the vertebrae for a closer look. In doing that, what you can see in the bottom half of the vertebra is basically a straight line that connects the front of the vertebra to the back of the vertebra. And it involves both the fracture on the anterior, or the front surface, and that small fracture which is now visible on the back surface.

The marks are consistent with a stab wound. Dowell gets on the phone with detectives and brings them up to speed. And he said to stab one, which was amazing because I'd seen numerous bodies and skeletal remains. And to me it looked, I'm not a medical expert, but it looked like something deteriorated because of the weather conditions. But the doctor was very happy. He said, stab one. Any knives that you find or that you find might be associated with this case, I would like to see those knives. Detectives have one suspect in the case, a convicted felon named Edmund Marr.

By chance, he was arrested on a robbery charge just months after Graham disappeared. Among his personal belongings at the time of the arrest, a black bag. In that backpack was a dagger-type knife, personal belongings at the time of the arrest, a black bag. In that backpack was a dagger-type knife, which was significant to us because now we had a victim who was obviously stabbed to death. The knife is essentially going through the chest wall, through the chest cavity, and

into the body and through the body of the vertebra and emerging out into what is essentially the spinal column. Dowell takes custody of Edmund Marr's knife and compares it to his autopsy findings. The suspect knife, in fact, had a long enough knife blade to actually produce the kind of trauma that was found in the vertebra of Elaine Graham. The knife is long enough, but is its shape consistent with the scratch marks seen on Elaine Graham's vertebrae? The knife would have penetrated this body of the vertebra like this, so we can measure this backside, see what the length of that mark is, and put it here,

and it actually is the same dimensions, or essentially the same dimensions. Detectives believe this is the knife that killed Elaine Graham. They will need more, however, to convince a district attorney to file charges. They take the knife to criminalist Greg Matheson, who takes the handle of the knife apart and finds a second clue inside. Inside of the handle, you could physically see what looked to be a kind of dark red, dried, flaky material, which is what blood looks like after it's been there for a while. So it appeared that something did seep down inside of the handle, dampened another swab, removed a very small portion of that,

ran the phenothelium test on it, and it gave me an indication that that was blood. It was type A, and our victim was type A. So it was just another little piece of the puzzle. Circumstantial, yes, but it was still a piece of the puzzle that was still fitting in there. In 1983, DNA testing is still a decade away. In the meantime, the case against Edmund Marr is close,

but still not quite good enough for the local DA. Detectives Tippin and Orozco take the news hard. It's a great disappointment when it wasn't found, because of all your work that you put into it. And then it was a bad feeling, but, you know, we just continued working it. Homicide detectives are guys that just continue to grind, and they just keep looking for that thread, looking for that little thing that might pull the case together. So you can't get too down, because you have to just keep scratching for more.

As you come in here and you realize that there's usually only a few people that remember these cases, it's the detectives, the family, and ultimately the perpetrator. But everybody else has just put them in a box and put them on a shelf. Nineteen years after investigators first opened a file on Elaine Graham's murder, the LAPD forms a cold case unit, and a new generation of detectives picks up the investigation. And now we come along and we resurrect the case and now you're part of the cog. You're responsible and hopefully we'll be able to close it and not really bring closure but maybe provide some answers. The thing

that gets me about the cold case is you wonder you know what would have happened to this person whether it was a person that was a grandfather already or whether it was a child or a young mother or a son or whatever, you wonder where their life would have gone, and especially when we have the totally innocent victim, which is the one that generally cold case detectives gravitate to. In the evidence boxes, detectives Marsha and Jackson are drawn to Edmund Marr's knife

and the blood found on it. All they could tell us was it was type A blood, which is, what, 40% of the population. And it excluded Marr's own blood being in there because he was type O, but it included Elaine Graham's. The first thing is, what can we do forensically? John Lewin is a deputy DA with LA County. He reviews the Graham evidence and agrees with detectives.

The emerging science of DNA might be just the tool they need to put Edmund Marr behind bars. I looked at this case, I looked at Rick and Tim and I thought, oh my God, I think we have enough right where we're at. I mean, let's see if we can get more, but this is a case that definitely needs to be pursued. This is the knife I was asked to examine, the knife also known as Item 32. On December 11, 2002, criminalist Nick Sanchez takes custody of a knife pulled from the backpack of Edmund Marr, a convicted felon, as well as a suspect

in the 1983 abduction and murder of Elaine Graham. I was asked to examine the knife for the presence of blood and, if possible, follow up that examination with DNA testing. Sanchez places the knife for the presence of blood and if possible, follow up that examination with DNA testing. Sanchez places the knife under a microscope and locates what appears to be a small blood stain near the knife's hilt. It was probably about the size of a period on a newspaper page, maybe even a little smaller. So that sample was then collected onto a cotton swab.

The cotton swab was extracted for DNA. I obtained what's normally known as gender typing. While the sample is too degraded to extract a full DNA profile, Sanchez does identify the blood as belonging to a female. It is a first and significant step in the case against Marr. And that ended up being really important because what we learned was, without question, the blood from inside of the knife not only was type A, but it was female. And now the defendant was in the position of, even if it's not Elaine's blood, well, whose female blood is underneath your dagger? Forensically, the next step would be to compare blood from the knife to a sample from Elaine Graham. And that is where the cold case runs into a problem.

We did not have Elaine Graham's DNA. She was cremated. We had nothing 20 years later that was booked into evidence that we could get DNA from. Since we did not have a reference sample from Elaine Graham, I asked Detective Jackson about her family and if we could possibly obtain samples from them. Sanchez conducts a reverse paternity test, taking DNA from Elaine Graham's daughter, Elise, stripping out the paternal DNA from her father, Steven, and seeing if what's left is consistent with genetic markers found on the knife.

Once I typed the reference samples, I determined that the person who contributed the blood to the knife could have been the mother, the biological mother. Sanchez's could-have-been keeps the focus on Edmund Marr. But it's not good enough by itself to support a charge of murder. Investigators need more and turn their attention to the suspect's family. The question becomes, number one, did they give us the whole story 20 years ago? Number two, even if they did, have they learned something since then that maybe we don't know about? Investigators need to shake up the Mara family. First step, plant a story about Elaine Graham in the LA Times.

My mom called me and she says, do you have a newspaper? I said, nope, and I'm not going to go. I'm running out the door to go get one. All she had to do was say they reopened the case. Kat Stevenson is Edmund Marr's sister. In 1983, she told investigators she believed her brother might be involved in Elaine Graham's murder. 20 years later, the article gets her attention. And I sat straight up and I went, Elaine Graham?

And she said, yes. I went, no way. I flew off that couch, flew down a ride aid, grabbed the newspaper, went to the California section, and there it was. As she reads the L.A. Times, Stevenson relives the old investigation and waits for a second visit from the men in suits. They go, hi, we're Officer Tim Marcia and Rick Jackson.

I go, I was expecting you. Come on in. She was very consistent with what she told the police back then, which is actually damaging information when you accumulate all the information. Jackson believes Stevenson is telling them all she knows. But what about other family members? Investigators begin secretly monitoring phone conversations between Marr and his family. One of the calls they intercept is between Kat Stevenson

and the suspect himself. I think, you know, her car doesn't just coincidentally end up around the corner from my house. They said they found DNA. Wow, okay. They said they found it in, you know, according to the article, they found it in the hilt of a knife. You know, and when I asked them, I go, what do you mean you found a bloodied knife in his bag? I go, wouldn't it have been cleaned off or something? Yeah, exactly. And they said it was cleaned off to some degree, but blood has a way of creeping into crevices.

Edmund Marr sounds nervous, but says nothing that implicates him any further in Elaine Graham's murder. It's a conversation between Marr's mother, Frances, and his cousin, Edward Cardona, that gives police the handle they are looking for. He was contacting Frances Marr to tell her, you know, how sorry he felt to see that this is all coming about in the newspaper again. And so they started discussing what had transpired over the past 20 years.

I even asked him point blank, I think about 10 years ago, did you do it? You asked him? I asked him point blank. I said, hey, fella, you know, between you and me, I don't care about nobody else. Did you do it? You asked him? I asked him, point blank. I said, hey, fella, you know, between you and me, I don't care about nobody else. Did you do this? No, I didn't do that. He was tired of walking, didn't have no money for a bus fare,

and he said he was looking to get in the car, steal a car. So he's going through the parking lot. He said he saw a Volkswagen with a key in it. So he said he got in, and he said, man, I got keys in it, got a car, it's a Volkswagen. You know, you can go a long way, you know. So he did take got in and he said, man, I got keys and I got a car. It's a Volkswagen. You know you can go a long, long ways, you know. So he did take the car, huh? Yeah, he said he took the car. Right away, we knew that that's not the same statement he gave to Paul Tippin and Leroy Orozco when he was interviewed back in 1983.

Cold case detectives can now place Edmund Marr inside Elaine Graham's car and the suspected murder weapon in his hands. Marr is arrested outside of his home in Cathedral City. In March of 2005, he avoids a trial by pleading guilty to second-degree murder charges. At sentencing, Elise Graham, only two years old at the time of the murder, confronts her mother's killer. I would wish to see her the way you saw her, Edmund.

Did she look something like I do now? I've been told that I have her cheekbones. Did she tell you about me when she begged for her life? For just one more moment with her baby girl? You know, I sat at the console table, but you could hear the sniffling in the back.

That was one of the toughest days, listening to her talk. Ugh. That's tough. Today, Edmund, you ask this court for mercy. For one more year with your mother. But I ask you, where was that mercy for my mother 22 years ago when you so selfishly and unnecessarily took her life? Very gratifying.

This case was the only one that I left behind that I really wanted to see solved. In the LAPD, they called cold case detectives closers, a badge of honor worn by men and women who go into a room full of old evidence boxes and come out with the answers. Before I came on the job, I had a friend of the family that happened to be a priest, and he was from the East Coast, from Boston, and his whole family were police officers. The day that I became a police officer and was sworn in, he took me to the side and he

says, I hope you understand that this is a calling. Some day you're going to figure out why you have become a police officer. When I was assigned to this unit and we started working these cases, I think I figured it out. Edmund Marr is currently 60 years old and serving out his sentence in a California prison. He gave up his right to a parole hearing in 2012, and in 2019, he was denied parole.

Marr will have another parole hearing in 2024, when he's 64 years old. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. 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 at Brooke Giddings on Twitter

and at Brooke the Podcaster on Instagram. I'm also active in the Facebook group Podcasts for Justice. Check out more Cold Case F 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.