Cold Case Files - The Lost Patient
Episode Date: January 31, 2023Janie Landers disappeared from a home for the impaired in 1979, in what is the latest consequence of the facility’s history of neglect. When Janie’s body is found there are numerous suspects, but ...it takes years before the killer, and the atrocities in the facility, are uncovered. Check out our great sponsors! Nutrafol: Grow thicker, healthier hair by going to Nutrafol.com and use code FILES to save $15 off your first month’s subscription! Start your investigation today and download June’s Journey! Available on Android and iOS mobile devices, as well as on PC through Facebook Games.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
An A&E original podcast.
This episode contains descriptions of violence.
Listener discretion is advised.
My dad got the call about Janie being missing.
She was my sister.
She was mentally disabled.
I know Janie experienced being locked in rooms.
Fairview was not a good place for anybody to be.
She had a good heart.
Now my sister was gone.
Why Janie?
I often wondered if the person that murdered Janie
was out there harming someone else.
This was the beginning of my quest
to try to get her case solved.
There are 120,000 unsolved murders in America.
Each one is a cold case.
Only 1% are ever solved.
This is one of those rare stories. It's a pleasant spring afternoon on March 9, 1979,
when the Oregon State Police receive a report from Fairview Training Center, a mental health facility on Reed Road in Salem, they inform police that one of their patients, 18-year-old Janie Landers, has absconded from the facility.
Janie's sister, Joyce Caldwell, recalls what life was like growing up in the Landers family. We grew up in Coos Bay, Oregon.
It's like a logging, fishing town.
Back then it was anyway.
You got your oceans and you got your mountains and your trees and your rivers and lakes, you know, so it is a very pretty place.
There was five siblings and, of course, my mom and dad.
Carolyn was the oldest.
Janie was second born. Carolyn was the oldest. Janie was second born.
Rachel was the third.
I was fourth, and then my brother is the youngest of the family.
Despite the age difference, sisters Janie and Joyce are inseparable.
Janie and I were the closest as far as siblings go,
so we were playing with baby dolls
and running around like little toddlers would. as far as siblings go. So we were playing with baby dolls
and running around like little toddlers would.
Running for Janie was something happy for her.
She liked being outside.
Even though she was older, we were similar
because her functioning level was the same as mine.
Janie was developmentally impaired
with the developmental age of an eight-year-old.
Her impairments had been discovered during her time at school, where it was noticed that she
struggled to sit still and got upset very easily. Janie also took to throwing objects and running
away from home, but she always made sure to come back. When she was seven years old,
she was sent to Fairview Training Center.
My parents wanted whatever would help Janie.
At this time, they had three other kids at home,
and here's Janie needing some help
that they didn't know how to give.
Coos County Mental Health determined
that she did have learning disabilities.
Her IQ was low, but they also felt that she had some kind of psychological issues going on
and recommended for her to go to Fairview for further testing.
Over time, the separation from her sister wears on Joyce.
It was very emotional for me.
She was who I played with, so I didn't have that anymore.
And I would be sad all the time
because I never got to see her for such a long time.
I miss playing with her.
We both loved it outside. I didn't get to do that with her. We both loved it outside.
I didn't get to do that with her anymore.
It was sad.
She would call me on the phone.
She'd ask me for letters.
She loved me writing long letters.
It was hard for my parents because they lived so far away.
As time went by, my dad would call the school
about at least getting some visit time with her or having her come home and spend time
with us. He'd go up to the schools and sometimes he'd get the seer and other times he wouldn't.
He'd get there, he wouldn't know that she'd been moved to a different cottage, so he'd have to schedule another visit.
The staff there at Fairview would do assessments,
and they would say she needs more of this type of training or this kind of behavioral classes.
So they would encourage my parents to let her stay longer.
By March 9, 1979,
Janie had become a ward of the state,
which meant that the state exercised control over her
instead of her parents.
Police descend on Fairview Training Center
after receiving the missing patient report.
They are told by staff members that 18-year-old Janie
has been missing for several
hours. Police begin their search immediately, as recalled by Detective Sergeant Steve Henkel.
Detectives start gathering information. They interviewed her teacher first,
and they found out that Janie was last seen in her classroom and that Bill Graff, her counselor,
he had come in and spoken with her
while she was in class for a short while,
and a short time later, she stormed out of the classroom.
And the teacher said that she saw Janie walking
from the classroom towards Kozer Cottage,
which was the housing unit where she lived.
But Janie didn't arrive at Kozer Cottage
where she was supposed to,
and then they listed her as AWOL.
Leona Wace, one of the psychiatric aides at the facility,
is more than worried for Janie's welfare.
The staff was all talking about it up until end of shift,
and we hadn't heard any word other than,
nope, they haven't found her yet.
Police learn that the last time Janie was seen was shortly before 2 p.m.
As the search for Janie begins, the facility makes contact with her parents.
I had come home from school, and my dad asked me and the rest of my siblings
to have a seat, that he had something to tell us.
And he proceeded to tell us about a call
that he got regarding Janie,
that the school had told him that she was missing.
They felt that she would come back after a couple hours
because she had gotten upset earlier in the day,
that everything would be okay.
Police first search the entirety of the grounds at Fairview, but they find nothing that
could indicate where Janie had vanished. But it isn't long until a witness comes forward,
changing everything. I saw this man walking across the road. The feeling I had was something bad
was happening, and I thought, I've got to help somehow. There were rumors like
crazy, the search for someone that walked off from their cottage. But I was afraid this was way more
serious. As the investigation into the disappearance of Janie continues, a Fairview employee offers crucial information. I worked
at Fairview for approximately three and a half years. I was a psychiatric aide. The day that
Janie disappeared, it was just as normal as could be. I usually left home shortly after two to go
to work. My shift was three to eleven when I turned a corner close to the main driveway that I went
up every day, I saw this girl and I recognized her as a resident. I did not know her name,
but I had seen her on campus. I see a car that's parked on the shoulder and a gentleman walking
in front of my car. I thought, I don't recognize him.
This is kind of fishy.
Why would that man be out of his car?
What is he even doing getting close to her?
And I thought, should I pick her up or should I not?
I wanted to, but there were strict rules against it.
So I quickly went up to my cottage and called security. Security went down and checked.
They didn't find anyone.
Investigators theorized that the person Leona had seen was most likely Janie. They asked her
to provide a description of the man she had seen her talking to. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans.
He was maybe 35, 40.
He had a big pot belly, about 5'8 or 5'10.
He needed a haircut.
It was kind of shaggy.
She also provides information about the vehicle,
describing it as a gold-colored sedan with four doors.
Now we have more of a possibility of an abduction.
Like, she didn't just walk away. She was talking to somebody.
Fairview had hundreds of employees,
and there was no restricted access to the facility,
so it could have literally been anyone.
Investigators zero in on the last person at Fairview to speak with Janie, Bill Graff.
Bill Graff was a person of interest. He was a counselor. Somebody that had close contact with
her had had access to Janie and that she would have gone to or trusted. So we would want to
know what the nature of that conversation, but also what the nature of their relationship was.
80 million people in the U.S. experience thinning hair, and no one wants to talk about it.
Thankfully, there's Nutrafol, the number one dermatologist-recommended hair growth supplement.
It's clinically shown to improve your hair growth, thickness, and visible scalp coverage for men and women.
Nutrafol goes beyond genetics to target stress,
hormones, nutrition, metabolism, aging,
and lifestyle factors that may be impacting your hair.
Every formula is physician-formulated using natural, medical-grade ingredients
for reliable results without compromises.
In clinical studies, 72% of men saw more scalp coverage
and 86% of women saw improved hair growth after six months.
And by the way, Nutrafol is also trusted and recommended by more than 3,000 top doctors.
You can grow thicker, healthier hair and support our show
by going to Nutrafol.com and entering the promo code Files to save $15 off your first month's subscription.
This is their best offer anywhere, and it's only available to U.F-O-L.com, promo code FILEZ.
Bill Graff provides as much information to investigators about 18-year-old Janie as possible.
I met Jane probably in 1977, 1978. I was her one-to-one therapist. Jane was like
working with a nine-year-old. She would like to color. She didn't really know how to read.
She was very kind and loving. She had a lot of skills. She would clean up where she lived,
an area, wash dishes, dry dishes. Shortly before Janie's disappearance, she was living in a group home with other Fairview patients.
Three and a half months before Jane was missing, she was still living in the house next to the group home.
She lived with another lady called Cheryl.
They must have gotten some type of altercation.
The other lady was warming up some chili.
Jane grabbed the chili off the stove and poured it over Cheryl's head and burned her.
District Attorney Paige Clarkson explains the situation further.
This altercation wasn't totally out of the blue
for a patient like Janie Landers.
She definitely struggled with appropriate responses
to frustration.
After the altercation, Janie was taken from the group home
and placed back in the state hospital.
Soon after, she had another setback.
Her insurance plan changed after returning to the hospital,
which meant that her therapy with Bill Graff was no longer covered.
I told Jane that I couldn't work with her anymore.
I told her that I won't be back the next day,
and that's the day she took off.
She was no longer in the group home.
Bill Graff was familiar to her.
She trusted him.
Now she's kind of in this big change
where she's now placed back at fairview to her her whole world has now changed again
investigators have some further questions for bill
the witness gave the description to the police and and I almost fit that description,
but I hadn't done anything.
Polly Graff, Mr. Graff,
and the result was that he passed,
and they believed that he was truthful.
The days continue to pass slowly,
but Janie still remains missing.
I think everybody recognized that her vulnerable nature made Janie a prime target for someone that would want to do her harm.
With no particular direction other than the description of this unknown male,
the thought was that the motivation for abducting this young female
was most likely to sexually assault her.
Investigators run routine background checks
on Fairview employees,
and several of them stand out.
So we're focusing on employees
that we're able to determine had prior sex offenses.
In 1979, Oregon did not have a sex offender registry,
making it difficult for Fairview to screen employees
for sex crimes convictions.
But despite all the efforts, there weren't any employees
that stuck out as a person of interest
in the initial days of the investigation.
The longer that time went by,
the chances of finding her alive were dwindling. In Coos Bay, the Landers family waits for news of Janie.
I had just recently turned 14 and I do remember asking my dad probably a couple of times a
day, you know, before I go to school, you know, have you heard anything about Janie?
And each day it was, you know, no calls.
They're still looking.
I kept hoping and praying that she would go back to the school, return there, be safe.
On the morning of March 14, 1979,
a landowner is checking his field and the perimeter of his property when he comes across the body of a young female.
She had been found at the edge of his farm field, just a stone's throw from the highway.
Authorities knew they had one missing person.
They knew that this was probably Janie.
A landowner walking his farm property along Highway 214,
right outside of the Salem area, not too far from the Fairview Training Center,
found a body, and he immediately reported it to police.
Investigators embark on the scene.
The young woman is lying face down in some bushes.
They roll her over and observe that her neck is peppered in stab wounds.
The victim is immediately identified as 18-year-old Janie Landers.
There wasn't a lot of evidence.
There was blood there. There was no signs of a struggle.
It was pretty clear that the body was just dumped in the bushes.
Investigators canvas the area and speak with the homeowners in the immediate vicinity.
But nobody can provide any further insight into the gruesome murder.
All I remember hearing at that time was that Janie's body was found at Silver Falls Park. The idea that I may
have been the last person to see Janie alive besides that man haunts me to this day. I did
feel guilty because I could have picked her up. I have thought about her in that car and that man
with the knife hurting her and killing her. Yeah, it hurts. It still hurts.
With Janie identified as the body in the field, investigators now have the gut-wrenching task
of informing her family. When my dad got the call about Janie, he had distress in his voice.
And then he tells us Janie's body was found.
It looked like she had been murdered.
I didn't want to believe that they found her dumped somewhere.
The family is in a state of disbelief.
The first call that my dad got, there was no indication that it was serious,
just that she was missing.
They knew early on that she was seen
talking to some stranger,
and they didn't tell us that until after her body was found.
It was like they were covering up stuff.
Joe Wykowski,
executive director of Emeritus Community Vision,
a company that works with people
with intellectual disabilities,
shares his thoughts on the decision
not to inform Janie's family
of the circumstances surrounding her disappearance.
At some point during the day,
they had a pretty good indication
that she wasn't coming back
and should have disclosed that to the family.
Janie's body is transported to the medical examiner's office.
Investigators hope the autopsy can provide some much-needed information.
In the autopsy, one of the things that was determined was that her stomach contents
were consistent with what was served at the noon meal
at Fairview on March 9th.
That information would suggest that she was killed
shortly after she was last seen.
The autopsy also reveals some more information
regarding Janie's cause of death.
This was a vicious attack that Janie suffered.
We learned that the actual cause of death
was blunt force trauma to her head.
There was some sort of instrument available to the offender
to hit her in the head, and that would have killed her.
In 1979, the forensic capabilities were not DNA.
What we were looking for was hair standards
and fibers to do direct comparisons,
fingerprints. And if we had blood, we were able to do some typing in order to narrow down a suspect
pool. One earring was collected from Janie's ear, but the other one was missing. That was collected
as evidence. And there were four hairs that were found in Janie's hand, like, clutched in her fist, that were collected at autopsy.
Investigators and Janie's family learned from the autopsy
that she had not been sexually assaulted.
It was very clear to us that we were looking for a perpetrator
who would prey on children or young women.
Investigators turned to the media in the hopes to generate some leads that could point them in the right direction.
In 1979, when we want to broadcast information to the public, we're going through the newspaper
primarily.
The Statesman Journal was where we would generate leads and tips from.
Leona provided a comprehensive description
of the man who was observed with Janie before she vanished.
So investigators call in a composite sketch artist to draw up a likeness.
There was newspaper articles about Janie being missing
and the sketch of the suspect was put in the paper.
Two women that worked at the food cart on Fairview
saw the article in the paper and the sketch of the man
last seen talking to Janie, recognized him as a man
that they had served at the food cart
the day she went missing on March 9th.
We don't know who he was, but we know that he at least came
and he had lunch there.
We didn't have a lot of other information to go on.
As investigators work around the clock to try and find a suspect,
Janie's family prepares for her funeral.
My dad brought Janie back home to be buried.
Her funeral was held at a church.
I walk into the foyer area.
The first thing I see is Janie's casket,
and I just dropped to my knees.
That point, it came to a reality that she was gone.
I couldn't even get up off the floor.
I was just sobbing. To be continued... her sister's murder. With over a thousand scenes full of hidden clues, there's always something
new to discover. Our team is playing right now, and trust me, the plot thickens in chapter two.
It's the Prohibition era. Very film noir. Very immersive. And the danger is real, as June
discovers that she's not the only one on the case. And with chapters added every week, there's always new characters to meet
and places to search. June's Journey has tons of fun and unique features. You can build your very
own island estate, create scrapbooks to learn more about each character, and meet other players in
the June's Journey community by joining a detective club. So pick up where you left off to uncover new secrets or start your investigation today and download June's Journey. Available on Android and we're here to debunk the myths about people who join them and show that anyone can be manipulated. Our past interviews
include survivors and former members of the Manson family, NXIVM, MS-13, Teal Swan, Heaven's Gate,
Children of God, and the Branch Davidians. Join us every week as we help you spot the red flags.
Get new episodes of Trust Me every Wednesday on Podcast One or wherever you get your podcasts.
By the time Janie is buried, the investigation is in full swing.
After the autopsy and the search warrant, law enforcement is still looking into who this individual was last seen with Janie,
and we still don't have any real leads there.
The investigation turns back towards who had contact
and who had motive to harm Janie.
Investigators build a timeline leading up to Janie's disappearance,
and that's when they learn about the incident
with the fellow resident, Cheryl.
Janie had got into an altercation with another resident
at that group home named Cheryl. Janie had caused a significant injury to her. Cheryl had a boyfriend
named Ray Wright, who was around the same age. Ray didn't really care a whole lot for Janie.
Investigators look into Ray further and discover that he was really upset
about what happened to his girlfriend.
Rumors have been circulating that Ray wanted to kill Janie
for what she had done.
Ray Wright was very vocal
about not caring a whole lot for Janie.
He made several statements saying,
I killed Janie or I want lot for Janie. He made several statements saying,
I killed Janie or I want to kill Janie.
Investigators bring Ray in to be questioned.
He definitely had been on law enforcement's radar before.
He seemed like somebody who would have a motive.
But Ray insists that he did not kill Janie.
We were never able to confirm or deny his involvement.
And Cheryl had the same type of struggles that Janie had.
She was a difficult witness, so both her and Ray fell off the radar
as plausible suspects going forward.
With no other leads to go on,
the case fails to pick up momentum.
The case slows over time because there's really no new information coming in.
After about 1980 to 81, the case was put back on the shelf to work other active cases.
Joyce tries to keep the case alive,
and investigators do what they can.
But by the mid-1980s, the case goes cold.
In all the calls I made to the Oregon State Police,
they would tell me,
it's a cold case, it's going to take a long time.
Another year would go by, and another five would go by.
But we didn't give up on her.
The family continue with their lives as best as possible.
But Janie is never far from their minds.
But then, in 1989, the police finally receive new information.
Ten years after the murder.
OTIP came in to Salem Police Department.
Individuals who said they were neighbors to Cheryl and Ray Wright at some point close to the time Janie went missing
said that they heard Ray say that he killed Janie.
Cheryl and Ray were together when Janie was killed.
But by the time the case was reopened in 1989,
they were no longer in a relationship.
Cheryl was re-interviewed by detectives,
and Cheryl said that she remembered seeing the truck
that Ray drove, and she remembered seeing the earring
that Janie had in the truck.
That was a huge piece of information because we knew that Janie was missing the earring at autopsy.
If we were able to find that earring and match it to Janie's other earring,
that would have been a massive break in the case.
Now, 10 years later, investigators once again go searching for Ray Wright and his truck.
Ray denied any involvement.
He didn't have any other knowledge to provide about the injuries to Janie or anything of that nature.
But eventually, we figure out that that car was destroyed and we're never going to get any information out of it.
Ray was always someone that the police considered viable,
but there was no evidence that connected him
to Janie on this day at all.
Cheryl and Ray made statements and interviews,
but we have to keep in mind that Cheryl and Ray
both had mental disabilities as well.
What looked like a promising lead fizzles out,
and once again, the case goes cold.
In 2000, Fairview Training Center closes its doors for good,
after their reputation is marred by abuse allegations.
People started moving out of Fairview in the late 70s and then in the
80s there was a bigger push to start to move people out of the institution
because Fairview just has a long history of people's rights being taken away.
People were giving medications they shouldn't have. People were sterilized
against their will. People were restrained.
When I heard Fairview was closing,
I was probably one of the happiest persons on Earth
because I knew of the history of the facility.
I learned about some of the residents
being strapped down or locked in rooms.
I know Janie experienced some of that.
I often wonder, would my sister Janie be thriving today?
The help that people like Janie gets today is so much different,
and I think she would have done so much better
had she gotten that chance, but she didn't.
I was always hopeful that Janie's case would be
solved. It's just part of
that time I was
a young mom raising three little
boys, and the focus
was there.
Janie
was still a huge part of Joyce's
life, and she felt like
she owed it to her big sister to find
her killer. It's 2015, and she is
now 50 years old, and their father is 82 years old. Her mother had since passed away without
knowing who took her daughter's life. Time is catching up on the family, and they long for
justice. Janie's case had gone 36 years without being solved,
but technology had changed.
Kicked the police department,
tried to find out if there's been any movement in her case.
In 2015, I went to the Oregon State Police Department
to speak to Detective Hinkle about Janie's case
and the possibility of reopening it. Joyce hangs her last hope of about Janie's case and the possibility of reopening it.
Joyce hangs her last hope of solving Janie's murder
on the promise of new technology.
I talked to Detective Hinkle and a couple other officers.
I knew just from my own studies and watching TV
that the technology was better in 2015
than it was in 1979.
They had the ability to test her clothing
to see if anything was there, you know,
was there ability to match DNA.
The times had changed.
This case had additional problems from the beginning
because Fairview no longer existed at the time that I started the case.
In 2015, Fairview had been gone for 15 years.
My first steps in the investigation was to track down the case file
and begin going through those case binders
and learning what happened with the original
investigation. I paid special attention to the autopsy report and the crime scene photographs.
She had fought, obviously, as evident by the hairs in her hand and the defensive wounds on her arms.
Detective Hinkle focuses on Janie's stab wounds. You can tell that the wounds are deep,
that there was a lot of force behind these stab wounds,
but there's also no hilt abrasion present.
The hilt separates the handle from the blade,
and the purpose of a hilt is to keep your hand
from sliding down onto the blade when using that type of a knife.
And to me, the lack of a hilt, that's significant
because blood has the consistency of about motor oil
when it's wet like that, and it's very common
for someone's hand to slip down onto the blade
and also become cut in the course of this type of an assault.
So that would suggest to me that the killer was likely
to have been cut by the knife in the course of this dynamic fight.
And we had a high likelihood of finding DNA evidence on the body or on the clothing.
He reaches out to Jennifer Rydell, senior forensic scientist at Oregon State Police Forensic Laboratory. I'm an expert in bloodstain pattern analysis,
where one examines different bloodstains to see how they
may have been deposited.
Was it transferred?
Was it smeared?
Was it spattered?
When I reviewed the original report on the Janie Landers
case, her clothing was submitted at that time for examination for trace evidence. The clothing
obviously had blood on it and it was ABO blood tested, but DNA didn't exist as a forensic
technology in 1979. Luckily, the evidence had been packaged in paper like it was supposed to be, so
it didn't appear that it had been molded. We came up with a list of items we felt like had the best
likelihood of giving us a DNA profile or a blood stain
from the killer and not Janie.
I ended up collecting four isolated blood stains
from Janie Lander's shirt to send a DNA that I thought might
be transfers from the perpetrator.
If the perpetrator had picked her up and had, say, a cut on his finger or hand,
and he had grabbed her and maybe put her over his shoulder,
that would be a location where his hand would naturally go to her back.
Nine months after Janie's shirt is submitted for testing,
the results come back. I got a call from Jen telling me that they found a DNA profile
from an unknown male on a blood stain on Janie's shirt,
which was super exciting because now we have a suspect.
We don't know who they are, but we have a suspect.
Detective Hinkle came into my office to tell me
they have a hit on the blood on Janie's sweater.
Almost 40 years after Janie was murdered,
cold case investigators finally close in on her killer.
I got a call from Jen telling me that there was a CODIS hit,
and the suspect was Gerald Dunlap.
So I wanted to know who the hell is Gerald Dunlap.
His DNA profile was in CODIS because he was sentenced
and was in Oregon State Prison at some point.
Gerald Dunlap is a convicted sex offender,
first arrested in the 1960s.
Gerald Dunlap was sent to prison for 99 years
for the rape of a very young female victim
in 1961 in the state of Tennessee.
He was paroled, however, in 1973.
He was only there for 12 years.
It's not unusual in the United States back in the 70s
for people to get really long sentences
and only serve a small portion of it.
Detective Hinkle tracks down a photograph taken of Gerald Dunlap in Tennessee
when he was paroled.
And he looks eerily similar to the composite sketch
made of the man who was seen with Janie.
The cloud of suspicion deepens
as investigators learn that after Dunlap was paroled,
he was hired at Fairview Training Facility.
Dunlap worked in laundry.
Payroll records from Fairview show that he was employed
and working during the month of March in 1979.
When we interviewed the coworkers and supervisors
in Laundrie, they all said that they worked a day shift
and every single person had a break at 2 p.m.
That's the point where Janie went missing.
One of the supervisors I interviewed in Laundrie said
that he ended up having to fire Gerald
because he had patted a female patient
that worked in Laundrie on the butt. So that was another red flag, in addition to his prior rape offense from the 60s,
and then the sexual assault case in the early 90s,
where he sexually assaulted his step-granddaughter.
That case ended him up in Oregon State Prison.
What we were dealing with was a serial rapist,
somebody who preyed upon young women.
The justice system failed.
By letting him out, the justice system gave him a free card
to go and harm another person and eventually murder my sister.
When we got the photograph of him,
we did a double-blind photo lineup
with the witnesses that were still alive.
And they both picked Dunlap's photo out of that lineup.
When Detective Hinkle came to my home,
he said, I have some pictures here
that I'd like you to go through
and see if you can identify anyone.
I looked through them.
This is the man that I saw there.
And he says, yeah, we got him.
Investigators hand over all of their evidence
to the district attorney's office,
who determines that Dunlap was responsible for Janie's murder.
Janie's family finally knows who the killer is.
But tragically, justice is out of reach.
Dunlap died in prison back in 2002.
One moment I'm feeling elated.
Yes, we have a match of DNA, but yet he's deceased.
So right away I'm thinking,
we don't even get to take him to court
and find him guilty of what he did to Janie.
I was disappointed that Gerald Dunlap was dead.
I want 12 jurors to come in,
and I want them to say that Gerald Dunlap is guilty of this crime.
Once Paige Clarkson made the determination officially
that the case was at its legal conclusion,
her and I drove down to Coos Bay and met
with Joyce and her father and officially told them
that the case was closed and that Gerald
Dunlap murdered Janie.
I feel relieved knowing her case was solved
and the person that did it died in prison where he belonged.
Unfortunately, my mom passed away
before her case was solved.
But my dad was with me that day.
That Detective Hinkle came, and he
went from the very beginning of the case to the end.
And he brought a brick from one of the cottages
that Janie lived in.
And on the front, it has her name
and year of birth and year of death.
My dad and I were looking at the brick
and her little hair ties, and he looked at me.
And as tears were going down his face,
he asked me, can we now let Janie rest?
Cold Case Files is hosted by Paula Barrows.
It's produced by the Law and Crime Network and written by Eileen McFarlane and Emily G. Thompson.
Our composer is Blake Maples. For A&E, our senior producer
is John Thrasher, and our supervising producer is McKamey Lynn. Our executive producers are Jesse
Katz, Maite Cueva, and Peter Tarshis. This podcast is based on A&E's Emmy-winning TV series,
Cold Case Files. For more Cold Case Files, visit AETV.com. We'll see you next time. Plus, Pluto TV has hundreds of channels with thousands more movies and TV shows, available on live and on demand.
Download the free Pluto TV app on all your favorite devices and start streaming now.
Pluto TV. Drop in. Watch free.