Cold Case Files - The Interrogation / The Slide

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

A 14-year-old boy is charged with the murder of his sister, but his public defender believes the police coerced the boy's confession and that the real killer is still on the loose. And two deteriorated medical examiner's slides, made in a murder investigation 16 years earlier, give police the evidence they need to reopen the cold case and bring the lead suspect to trial.This Episode is sponsored by BetterHelpAngi - Download the free Angi too today or visit Angi.comBetterHelp: Visit BetterHelp.com/COLDCASE to get 10% off your first month.Marathon: Join Marathon Rewards today and start earning rewards on every gallon of gas. Marathon, where fun runs on full!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. I'll tell you what, Mike, once you have sitting that little chair over there. I just remember being led to this small room with a hard plastic chair. and up against the wall

and just being told to have a seat. I mean, my badge, it says, you know, it says police on it and it says detective, but that's not really what I do. What I do is I help people solve problems. In Escondito, California, on January 22nd, 1998, 14-year-old Michael Crowe sits in an interrogation room

speaking to a detective. My daughter is 12-year-old. He's just 12 years old. He's just cool. The day before, Michael's sister, Stephanie, was discovered stabbed to death in their suburban home. The paramedics are en route, but she's dead. Police are under pressure as San Diego waits for them to catch the killer. Investigators say 12-year-old Stephanie Crow was stabbed to death in her own home as her parents, siblings, and grandmother slept.

But with no witnesses, no weapon, and no signs of forced entry, solving this crime will not come easy. With no sign of a break-in, police believe it to be an inside job and focus on Michael as the probable killer. We feel there's evidence that warrants us talking to you in greater detail. And that's the long and short of it. That's why you're here. Michael denies any involvement. Police, however, don't believe it. The good part of Michael didn't do it.

I didn't. The part of the Michael that helps his sister. You telling me I did do it? The part of the Michael that helps her with her math. I didn't. I didn't do them. I just fell completely apart. I mean, nothing was real to me anymore.

Everything was just wrong. And I just had nothing to hold on to. You're blood in your room. How could that blood get there? How could it conceivably get there? They told me that my hair was in her hands, that her blood was in my room, and I just remember thinking that that was impossible.

But at the same time, this is the police telling me this. I didn't think they were lying. I was supposed to tell you an answer that I don't have. It's not possible to tell you something that I don't know. They, you know, left no room for me the question. for me the question that they told me that her blood was in my room.

They didn't say, we think. They didn't say, they said that her blood was in my room. In fact, there was no blood found in Michael's room. The police are bluffing. I always put my faith really in the science. And that's kind of what I guess my weakness was in this case. They had told me that science said I did it. And I trusted that over my own memory.

The 11th hours rapidly approaching, all this evidence is going to be in. Put a rush on some things that, quite frankly, is going to bury you, my friend. After two days of questioning, detectives get what they're looking for from Michael Crow, a confession. Tell us. If I tell you a story, the evidence is going to be completely... Well, then tell us the story. Well, why? I'll have to make it up.

Tell us the story. Michael. Do you want me to tell you a little story? Tell me the story. What happened that night? Okay, I'm just going to win you right now. It's a complete lie. Tell us the story, okay?

You let me know when you get the lie about. Okay, here's the part where I'll start lying. That night, it's all better. You couldn't take it anymore, okay? So, I went in the knife, went to a room, and I stabbed you. Michael Crowe is arrested for the murder of his sister Stephanie. Nescondido police arrest Stephanie's 14-year-old brother Michael for the murder. We've got a brother who now is her accused killer,

so she'll never come back, and he's got to be held responsible for his actions. When the story breaks, it's a heck of a story. Mark Sauer is a reporter for the San Diego Union Tribune. First of all, the initial news is you've got a 12. girl stabbed a death in her bed. The shocking news within a short period after that is that her brother and a couple of his friends had conspired and carried out the murder. That's an unbelievable story. We have evidence to indicate that all three were at the scene and that there was participatory acts by all three individuals. Joshua Treadway and Aaron Hauser, teenage friends

of Michael, are also charged with the crime. They thought that the boys were a deeply into video games and to almost a cult status into dressing and dark clothing. I thought that these boys had taken the violence from these games to such an extreme that they actually would plan and carry out a murder. When you think what's the worst that could possibly happen, you can imagine to you, let's see your daughter's murdered in her bed next to the room you're sleeping. Well, no, the worst is that happens and then your son is falsely accused. It isn't supposed to happen.

People who are killed here are supposed to be accused like this. Is that supposed to happen this way? Cheryl Crowe is Michael and Stephanie's mother. It just made us sick. It was horrible to watch that. Watching your child just be ripped apart right in front of your eyes. Then we knew absolutely that he didn't do it. I mean, it was almost a David and Goliath and a...

sense because it wasn't just the prosecution. I mean, the media. The day Stephanie Crowe was buried, her family and friends were overcome by grief and particularly stunned that it was her own brother who was being held on suspicion of murder. Now police have arrested two of his friends as well. The media just loved the idea of this, you know, violence from the high schoolers and it really fit their stereotype of what teenagers were like. I haven't lied to you. It was a disproving one case and proving another. It was sort of like being a prosecutor and a defense lawyer at the same time. First, you react to it actually as a person. I mean, obviously, as a lawyer, make note of those things.

But as a person, it's just, I can't believe that they would do this to a kid. It's really my first reaction. Mary Ellen Atchridge is a San Diego County public defender. In February of 1998, she begins to pick apart the Crow interrogation. You have my personal guarantee. that the help you need to accept this is going to be forthcoming. That is a per se violation of the law. That right there rendered this whole thing unusable. He's guaranteeing him an outcome, as if he is the judge, the jury,

and apparently the executioner of Michael Crowe. I don't know what's going on. You know what? That's possible. Well, Michael's 14, you know. Michael had never been in a police department before. Plus, I mean, his sister had just been murdered. I mean, how emulsionally vulnerable can a person get?

And then ultimately he writes this letter that they want him to write, and he says, well, you know, I must have done this because you're telling me I did this. In your own words, I think it's important that you tell us that's what I'm true. Michael's letter reads, Dear Stephanie, I'm so sorry that I can't even remember what I did to you. I feel that it is almost like I am more being convinced of this than really knowing it. It's not a confession, that's an equivocation. Specifically, because he can't say that he knew he did it,

there never was a confession by Michael Crow. What there was is there was a fiction invented by the Escondido Police Department. Atterge is a true believer in Crow's innocence. Getting a jury to believe it, however, is another matter. Most people don't believe that they would confess to something they didn't do. So it's really difficult to convince a jury that this is a false confession. And so I knew that we had to do more. I knew that I had to prove that somebody else did it.

Atridge pours through police reports looking for that somebody else and finds a man named Richard Toot. He was an unmedicated schizophrenic, and he went to a neighbor's house that night, and the woman described him as having Charles Manson's eyes. The night of Stephanie's murder, Richard Toewitt, was wandering through the crow's neighborhood, knocking on doors, looking for an ex-girlfriend. We did a lot of work with witnesses who saw him in the area, both before, during and after the homicide. and we developed his tendencies to sort of, I don't want to say stalk, but harass young girls of a similar appearance to Stephanie O'Crow. The day after Stephanie's murder, Richard Toot was questioned by police.

With a growing focus on Michael as a suspect, however, police dropped the lead and released Toot. They didn't step back and say, well, who else was in the neighborhood? And what about that guy? Atridge likes Toot. as a suspect. She wants to have a look at his red sweatshirt, confiscated from to it at the time of his questioning, and never tested for DNA. This is so dirty. You know what I mean? There's so much stuff on here. The shirt itself, it looked like a big old sponge of biological material.

There was definitely something to be had here, and so that's when my antenna pretty much went up, stayed up, and from there on, I started making demands about this shirt being tested. Atridge makes a motion for DNA testing of Richard Tewitt's red sweatshirt. Three spots of blood are identified on the sleeve. Basically, what it boiled down to is that there was nobody who ever walked the earth who could have been that donor except for Stephanie Crow. It was an extremely strong DNA head. The San Diego District Attorney dismisses charges against Michael Crow,

Joshua Treadway and Aaron Hauser. Comment, Aaron? No, no comment. No comment. You want to say anything. I mean, this must be a relief. It's a day of celebration. The celebration, however, does not last long.

They dropped the charges against us and then tried to bury the case as best they could and protect it. I thought he would be charged right away. I thought the DA would, of course, you know, when I wanted to charge the murderer, but it didn't happen, no. Tewitt is locked up on an unrelated

conviction, and the DA adopts a wait-and-see approach. He is in custody. He's received a three-year prison term, and that allows us to investigate again without any sort of rush. This crime is not going to be solved by the police or the district attorney because they are invested with the delusion that these three boys conspired to commit this murder. We had a quote in the paper from a former DA. We asked him about the position that that. The district attorney was in and the police and he said, well, they're in a very tough spot.

It's like trying to pick up a turd by the clean end. For months, the case languishes. Despite the DNA link, there is no arrest of Toitt forthcoming. You know, we haven't heard anything a while, what's going on. Oh, we have a new team investigating. You know, it's just another way of, I think really they're just sitting on their hands hoping that no one would ask whatever happened. Hoping that no one was going to push it. And finally, you know, we had to push it.

to be the ones. This is our closed file room. Primarily, we've got the crow case pretty much in this corner of all these boxes. Vic Koloka is a cold case detective for San Diego County. In 2000, he volunteers to take the Crow case, despite a partner's warning that to do so would be career suicide. I'm pretty well known for if there's something wrong. I voice my opinion.

I don't care how many stripes you've got on your shirt or on your bars, and I'll tell you how the truth is. So I think it's kind of why I fit the case because it was going to be in those kind of cases. I was going to have to go against probably probably the district attorney himself. It's kind of tough for a while because you didn't trust us. One of Koloka's first steps is to pay a visit to the Crows, a family that now sees the police as the bad guys. I think about it. So we didn't know who to believe. So we just had to. I understood your position too. I wouldn't trust me either. Just another cop.

He said that he was going to investigate the case and he was going to follow the case. you know, wherever the evidence led. And if it led back to the boys, he was going to charge him. But Mr. Crowley said to me, prove to me that my son did this. If my son did this, I'll accept it. But you prove it to me. They both had a common thing that they could cling to on an anchor. Both of them were searching for the truth to come out.

The family believed they knew the truth. Vic Koloka was going to tenaciously go after the truth. Koloka's search for the truth begins with a review of Michael Crow's confession. When I watched this tape, what I saw was just amazing to me. I haven't liked you. I haven't. I don't know. My feeling has always been as a cop is that we're here to help people. You know, we're here to help the innocent people. And what I saw was the opposite of what I was taught.

We're hurting somebody. We're very, very badly. Michael had given up. Michael was going to tell him whatever he wanted. That to me was the most critical part of the statement from Michael, and I knew that Michael admitted to something that we could prove never happened. Detective Koloka believes the blood on Richard Tewitt's sweatshirt provides sufficient evidence of guilt. The district attorney, however, doesn't necessarily agree. Tud was a transient dumpster diver, and the theory was, well, maybe the boys were wearing this shirt, killed Stephanie, and through this bloody shirt, into the dumpster or they threw something else bloody in there that got under the shirt.

Then Richard Tewitt is lounging around looking for something to eat and finds his shirt. Koloka needs to prove the theory wrong. He begins by gathering arrest reports involving to it. I get a call from a deputy up in North County here and said, hey, I've got a photograph of a guy named Richard Tweet. He'd misspelled the name. I said, do you want to say, yeah, let me take a look at it. He sent it to me, and lo and behold, there's Richard Tewitt. and a Polaroid photograph wearing the same shirt about a week or so before the murder.

So the fact that he found a dumpster, that was totally done away with. It was totally dismissed. Koloka believes he's zeroing in on Richard to it, but he is walking a lonely road. Every officer he knows is convinced the three boys killed Stephanie Crow. What am I missing? Am I making a mistake? What am I doing wrong here? And I just kept going over and over again.

came back the same conclusion. Richard Toot killed this little girl. Then the battle started is trying to convince other people how it was that the boys didn't do it. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Financial Stress has a quiet way of showing up. It's not just bills or numbers. It's those nights your brain won't stop running through what-ifs. I've definitely been there, staring at the ceiling, feeling like I should be doing better. But the truth is, 88% of Americans started this year feeling some amount of financial pressure. It's not a personal failure. It's part of being human. Therapy isn't about managing your budget. It's about easing the weight that money worries put on your mind and relationships. Better help is a great place to start that

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Vic Coloka is a cold case detective with a problem. He is convinced a drifter named Richard Tewitt killed 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe three years earlier. The DA for San Diego County, however, refuses to file charges. Vic asked them to charge to it, and they simply wouldn't do it because they were too invested in the guilt of the boys. I think it's probably the best way to describe it. Gary Shahn's and Jim Dutton are prosecutors with the California Attorney General's Office. They agree with Coloka, the local deal. The A has tunneled in on the victim's brother, Michael Crow, as a suspect, and ignored the case against Toot.

And I think just about anybody who would look at those 40 hours of interrogation tapes would know, for sure, at the bottom of their heart, as I did, there's no way that those kids did it. But what was amazing about the case against Toot was that everything fit. And what was also amazing is it seems as if, and this is rare in a criminal investigation, particularly a homicide investigation, But the case actually got better over time. On May 14, 2002, the state of California takes the initiative away from the local DA and swears out a warrant for Tewitt's arrest. We're in the old San Diego courthouse down in the bowels. This is the basement.

It's where they actually literally store thousands of cases. And we're going to go look at all that evidence that you collected in the Tewitt case. This is the smoking gun in the state's case against Richard Tewitt. the defendant's sweatshirt stained with drops of Stephanie Crow's blood. To its defense, however, has an explanation. They said that he may have been sitting on the floor in this particular cell or holding area

and that some of the police officers who were at the scene earlier that morning that had gone through the bedroom could have picked up blood on their soles of their shoes and those same officers are then tramping through this area where he is and therefore if he had sat down on the floor because there was no benches, then the blood could have transferred from there to the shirts.

Cold case investigators send it to its sweatshirt back to the crime lab to criminalist Faye Springer. They wanted me to look at those to see if I could tell the manner in which they were deposited. So are they transfer stains or are they spatter patterns or, you know, what is it I could say about those kinds of stains? Springer examines the blood stain and notices it has actually formed beads around the shirt's fibers. It had formed around the fibers of the textile, taken up the shape of the fibers, and bead it up around the individual fibers.

When it does that, that would indicate that it was wet, at least partially wet, when it was transferred. We spent a lot of time trying to shore up how that blood got there, And every time we'd look at it, it always came back to the same thing that happened during the time that it was airborne when Stephanie was being stabbed. The photograph is as I saw it when it came into my laboratory. Springer's analysis, however, does not end there. She takes a look at other clothing taken from Richard Toitt after the murder. This is an overall view of the front of the T-shirt. Including a white T-shirt, worn under the red sweatshirt.

I went ahead and looked at it for any additional blood stains and found a smear on the front lower hem area. You could see them with the naked eye. They were very small. There was three distinct stains very closely located to one another. Connie Milton is a criminalist. One month before trial, she extracts human DNA from the T-shirt stain. It was actually mixtures in all three stains.

mixtures of DNA from at least two people, and all three were slightly different in their composition, but they did indicate that they were mixtures of DNA of Richard Tewitt and Stephanie Crowe. It really helped us. I mean, you know, maybe a jury goodbye that possibly contamination adds to one shirt, but, you know, come on.

Lightning striking twice on the same tree, no, no way. So we really felt that that firmed up our case. The prosecutors, however, harbor no illusions about the difficulties and the difficulties inherent in the case. They know to its defense will retry the case against the three boys originally charged with the murder, Michael Crow, Aaron Hauser, and Joshua Treadway. Not only do we have to prove that another person did it, Richard Toot, beyond a reasonable doubt, we essentially have to disprove that the three boys did it. And if somebody just looks

at that first glance, that's filled in reasonable doubt. Do you want me to tell you a little story? Tell me this story. What happened that night? Okay, I'm just going to hold you right now. It's a complete lie. Tell us the story, okay? At trial, Michael Crowe watches his videotaped confession to the murder. He then explains to the jury why he confessed. I always knew in my heart was that at trial, they're going to see the whole thing,

and 12 people are going to experience what everyone else has experienced. See what I saw, see what happened to me. Officers came in and testified and noticed that Michael, Michael Crow seemed removed, not emotionally engaged in what was going on. That morning, that afternoon at the station, watching the TV and chuckling, playing the video game at the station. Six years after his sister's death, Michael Crow is again being questioned about his role in the death of his little sister.

This time, however, hard evidence in the case points in another direction. He shows the movements of Mr. Toot that night. We had a timeline that put Richard right there at that location at the time that we believe the murder happened around 10 o'clock at night. She starts out first down here. Mrs. Thomas sees him down here at the Lutheran Church. He's next seen again over here at the Mogulinski residence, knocked at the door. She says, come in. Next thing we know is he moves down here to the Homo residence. Mr. Homo looks out his bedroom window and sees his face.

and he jumps, startled, grabs an axe. He's last seen, according to the Reverend, walking, you can't really see too well, walking back down the road in this direction. After three months of testimony, the case goes to a jury. We, the jury, in the above-entitled cause, find the defendant, Richard Raymond Toot, guilty of the crime of voluntary manslaughter.

Citing the defendant's history of mental illness, the jury opts for a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, and a 13-year prison term. I really think you should have gotten more, but at the same time, I understand why. I think I can understand where the jurors were coming from. I mean, obviously, if I had my way in a perfect world, it would have been more.

I'm just glad that it's a conviction. I mean, he did it. Everyone knows he did it. I kind of fear for the community when he gets out. I just hope that everybody learns to lock their doors. In the eyes of the criminal justice system, the Stephanie Crow case is closed. For those who lived it, those who continued to live it, nothing about this case is ever really over.

I don't buy this closure thing. It's a really neat social worker term. Great. You think Michael has closure? Michael's just moving on with his life. I wouldn't call it closure. All of a sudden, Richard Tewitt's convicted, it's over? It's never over.

Mrs. Crow, never over for her. I can't imagine anything worse than losing a child. right thing to do. Yeah. I bet you'll sleep better at night too. That's good. When he said that to it was guilty and he could prove it, he was flying in the face of everything that everyone was telling him to do.

When they handed over the case, I'm sure that they made it very clear to him. Don't say that. Agree with us, just make this thing go away for everyone. And when he did that, I think it was an incredible act of bravery. Never had a little girl. Always wanted one. Should have been something. something. Should have been somebody really special. Man. People say, oh, Vic Koloka, he's a hero,

yada, yada, he's a detective. Give him one award. I don't want, I've gotten awards. Give me back Stephanie. In a 2013 retrial, Toit was found not guilty of the murder, due to possible contamination of evidence and released from prison. It's just past 5 a.m. in Minneapolis, Minnesota, And Lieutenant Jim Hymerl is in pursuit of a drive-by shooter. They've got two weapons in a car, recently fired. They hit him in a car. They tried to walk away from the vehicle. They just came on a corner in foot him and almost hit us.

The majority of the killings, they had a curry in Minneapolis, a current north Minneapolis right here. So these guys deal with it on a daily basis. Jim Hymerl deals with violence every day. Today, it's a drive-by. 22 years ago, it was something very different. The phone ring, and I assumed by the way the urgency of the call came in, was that it was a homicide. On May 20, 1984, dispatch sends Heimel to a small house on the northeast side of Minneapolis.

Inside, the sergeant finds 69-year-old Agnes Fafrowitz, face down and dead. One of the things you look at when you walk in, obviously, is the room and the positioning of the body. The victim's underwear had been pulled on around her ankles and her shoes off. I mean, that's not a natural position. And automatically that just tells you right then and there. More than likely, it's a sexual assault of some kind. Heimirl works his way through the house and isolates the killer's point of entry. The first bedroom I actually walked into was his bedroom.

And this is what I see right here. I see an open window. The screen had been removed. You can see where the glass had been removed, broken out. The windows up. Basically it was a who done it, but there were some leads. Sergeant Bob Nelson takes the lead on the case and examines the ransacked house. Her purse was dumped out, and there was contents of her purse in the bathroom.

And that wasn't right. Doors were open and drawers were open in the kitchen. Like somebody was looking for something, that wasn't normal. In the kitchen, detectives find several cigarette butts and bag the evidence. The next day, Nelson gets word that the victim's checkbook is missing. He puts a call out to the bank and waits for the killer to make a false step. Well, it was, yeah, hopeful. Generally, the suspects aren't that stupid that they go out and cash a check.

but it was a shot. Meanwhile at the morgue, doctors receive the body and begin their search for evidence. The cause of death was not as evident as it is in many cases. On May 21st, Dr. Gary Peterson supervises the autopsy of Agnes Fafowitz. With no obvious signs of trauma, the cause of death is a mystery to police, until the medical examiner opens up Agnes' chest. The assault caused stress on the heart, extra demands on circulation, increased the heart rate blood pressure.

The heart because of the underlying disease was not able to withstand that. Agnes had a heart attack while she was being raped. The medical examiner collects semen and releases the body for burial. Meanwhile, Sergeant Nelson receives a phone call. with the break he has been waiting for. Nelson. Hey, what's up? On a Tuesday morning, Nelson takes a call from a manager at the bank.

They had just taken in these two checks. One appeared to be a forgery to her, in that it didn't match Agnes Ravrovich's writing. The check was made out there was Bill Volmar Bailey. The check in the amount of $230 was cashed at a local liquor store on Friday the 18th. We believe that Agnes Verfovich was probably killed Wednesday night in the Thursday morning the 16th into the 17th. So she was already dead when this check was made out and cashed.

You look at the starting stroke, you look at the height of the letters, you look at the baseline. Nelson calls in a handwriting expert to compare the checks. The size of this A compared to this A, there's a different size, there's a different angle. And this letter R does not match with this letter R. And plus, you have different slants. You have a slant here, and this slant is going straight up, and the ending stroke and everything else is different. This was not written by Agnes.

This is a simulated signature of Agnes by the person doing it. So we definitely wanted to find this person. Nelson jumps in his car and heads to the liquor store, looking for the man who cashed a check from a dead woman. His name, Bill Volmer Bailey. So we went to the liquor store and we talked to Mr. Gidio, whose wife had taken in that check on Friday the 18th. The store owner says Bailey is an ex-convict

who moved to the area a month earlier. We're back by the, you know, bottles of booze, and we're talking to Mr. Gidio, and he's giving us a description of this guy, a white male, about 5'9, and I see this white male subject walking by right in front of the liquor store, and I said to Mr. Gidde,

his back was to the window. I said, that's him. And he turned around and goes, yeah, that's him. And so he walks right into his apartment here. Minutes later, Bailey leaves the apartment. Nelson is right on his heels. And he was walking across the lot here.

My partner and I got in the Enmark squad car, the Homicide Squad, and we pull up on the wrong side of the street here where Mr. Bailey was. And approximately about right here, we got out of the car he was smoking camel's cigarettes with the gold band underneath the filter

which were similar to the cigarette butts that were found in the ashtray of the house. Nelson puts Bailey in the squad car and begins to question him. They asked them why she had given them a check for $230 and he said, yeah, she wrote that to me. Why? Well, I did some work for her.

What kind of work do you do for her? Well, I cut her grass. Yeah, I cut her grass twice. How long ago? A couple days ago. Well, we already knew that grass was seven, eight inches tall. And it hadn't been cut in weeks. What else?

I asked him what else he did. He said he did a break job for a car. He said he'd clean up the battery poles. We knew that was a lie because both battery posts were caked heavily with an acid, crusted. So we felt very strongly that he was lying about everything he told us. The investigators bring Bailey to the station, read him his rights, and continue the questions. Everything he told us was wrong. And Snowbeck, my partner, asked him about the check again.

And Ron asked him, if she was already dead when the check was written, how could that be? And he said, quote, that's a good question. That was about the last thing he had said to it was pertaining to this case. And he didn't want to give us a written statement. Bailey is arrested and charged with the murder of Agnes Fafowicz. Several months later, we found out from a burglary detective, that he'd gotten Bailey in another set of three burglaries. Two of them were occupied dwellings,

were he to assaulted the older women. And we were like, what's he doing out of prison or out of jail? And we found out that the county attorney had dismissed the case. Dismiss the case against Bailey because the lab work came back and we didn't have DNA in them days. We were pretty mad. We were pretty mad. After six months in jail, Bailey is back on the streets.

And the case slips into the cold files, where it will stay for more than 15 years, until a key piece of evidence turns up in the unlikeliest of places. There was no other evidence to be found anywhere. As far as I know, this was definitely the last shot. If you own a home, you need to know about Angie, because whether you're dealing with daily maintenance, emergency fixes, or even a major renovation, It can be hard to find the right help.

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Free. This is the... Movies like Pineapple Express, the entire Star Trek film franchise and Gladiator, and TV shows like Survivor, Spongebob SquarePants, the Fairly Odd Parents and Ghosts. Pluto TV is always free. Hazzaw! Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. We're in the basement of Minneapolis City Hall, and this is the evidence storage unit. I had come here looking for evidence on a 1984 murder case of Agnes Fafruitz.

She was a 69-year-old female that had a heart attack during a rape. Barb Moe is a sergeant in the Minneapolis Homicide Squad. In May of 2000, she takes a call about a murder, some 15 years cold. I received a phone call one day, and it was a woman, Virginia Golden. Her mother had been murdered in 1984, and she had called me. It was right around the anniversary of her mother's death. You can imagine, without any kind of closure to this, she was still emotional about it,

and it's still bothered her enough to make a phone call, to ask for help. Mo agrees to take the case and heads to the property room, where she is dealt a blow. In this case, all the physical evidence on record had been destroyed in 1992. And it was inadvertently destroyed because at the time they were trying to make space

in the evidence unit and clear it out of unnecessary evidence. And I think the property sheets from this murder case had just inadvertently been placed in amongst the others. And they were signed off as to be destroyed. Among the items destroyed are the rape kit, cigarette butts, and victim's clothing. All items with potential for DNA. It's a mistake that could cost Moe her case.

It was upsetting because this was a woman that was in her home, living alone, and a total innocent victim. So it's a case that you would like to see something come of. Somebody held accountable for it. Over the next several weeks, Mo works the case, searching for a way to tie the murder to her suspect, Bill Bailey. I knew that there had been an autopsy done. So naturally there would have been a sexual assault exam done, which would have meant that they had obtained some samples from her.

Mo wonders if perhaps the medical examiner kept his own samples in a separate storage area. Mo figures it's worth a shot. Extremely hopeful. That's all we had to go on. So, yeah, everything was riding on that. This is the underground storage facility of our hospital. We keep old records, old slides. equipment, anything that doesn't actually have to be accessed on a regular basis.

In the basement of a hospital in downtown Minneapolis, Nancy Rowan searches through row after row of evidence, hoping to find the one slide that could crack a cold case. It was just a regular cardboard box and it was dated essay slides 1984. The boxes look like this and they will have the year and the and then the number of the assault. Inside the box, Rowan finds two slides collected at autopsy. Well, I was glad that I had found it because then we at least had a chance. So I just pulled the slide and proceeded upstairs with it.

I'm just really unsure as to what to expect. Kathy Knutzen is a DNA analyst. Essentially, yeah, it was a one-shot deal. We're working with limited sample, you're working with sub-quality, substandard quality DNA, and essentially you need to use it all when you do your one amplification. On October 14th, Knutzen examines the slide. I need to get to it. It's like sandwiched in between, two pieces of glass with some sticky glue in between,

and I wasn't going to be able, there's no way that I could get these cells off without removing all of that. Canutzen uses heat to melt the glue, and to get to, this is a little. DNA. Now, basically just by waving it over the heat, what this is doing is it softening that mounting medium and you'll see bubbles and you'll see it start to pull apart like that, starting to release. Knootson is able to extract a partial profile from the slide.

When compared to Bill Bailey, it's a match. You wouldn't expect to see this particular five locusts DNA type more than once in 15 million individuals. I guess that's what DNA does. Barb Coob is Agnes Fafowitz's granddaughter. She has been waiting 16 years for a phone call from police. I once heard something like DNA is the finger of God pointing down saying you did it. And that's kind of how I felt about finally, you know, they're going to get them. In December of 2000, Barb's prayers are answered as Bill Bailey is charged with the murder of Agnes Faffer. I knew from looking at his criminal history that he was a very dangerous person that deserved a lengthy sentence.

So that was our mindset. Mike Fernstahl prosecutes the case against Bailey. We felt fairly confident. We had obviously the DNA evidence was very important to us. The handwriting evidence was important. We had Bailey being in possession of a stolen check. And we had him giving a story that we could prove, was not true, so we felt fairly confident.

The trial opens in February of 2002. After nearly three weeks, the jury returns a verdict. Barb Kub is there as the guilty verdict is read. All the cousins were holding hands, and we all just, yes. So, yeah, and crying, and yeah, it was done. It was over, and he was going to get punished for it. Yeah, so it was a relief. The relief, however, is short-lived,

as the conviction is overturned two years later on a Miranda rights violation. After he was advised and he waived his rights, his story didn't change. So it was disappointing for them to rule that the statements were taken involuntarily. I knew he was a very dangerous person. And so we were going to go back and start over again and retry him with every intention of convicting them again. More than one year later, Bailey is back in court. court. On September 21st, 2005, a second jury finds Bailey guilty of murder. I feel he's a psychotic personality. He's a very violent person. Sergeant Bob Nelson has waited more than two decades to see

Bailey punished for his crimes. He's a type of person that should be in prison the rest of his life, and I think now he will be. I don't think he's got a motion. I don't think he's got a conscience. He can't to do what he did to her. And other women, He can't have a conscience. At sentencing, Barb Kube has a chance to tell the court about the grandmother she has lost. Throughout the trial, I think everybody thinks of her as the victim and forget she was a person. So I can't express what she was to our family, that she had a lot of friends. She's a god-faring woman.

She was a member of our family we all missed. Thousands of free movies and TV shows. We're coming at you with everything we got! Free. This is the mantra. Free. This is the... Movies like Pineapple Express, the entire Star Trek film franchise, and Gladiator. And TV shows like Survivor, SpongeBob SquarePants, the Fairly Odd Parents and Ghosts. Pluto TV is always free.

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