Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - 15-year-old Girl Found Raped, Stabbed to Death in Cornfield

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

Julie Ann Hanson was just 15 years old when her body was discovered in a Naperville, Illinois, cornfield. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed 36 times. On the evening Hanson vanished, she had been seen riding her bicycle to a brother’s baseball game. An older sister reported her missing the following afternoon, as her parents were not home when she disappeared, according to the newspaper. Hanson’s body was found later in the day in a cornfield about two miles from her house.Joining Nancy Grace today: Andrew Singer - Bode Technologies, BodeTech.com, Instagram/Twitter @BodeTechnology Ashley Willcott - Judge and Trial Attorney, Anchor on Court TV, www.ashleywillcott.com  Caryn Stark - NYC Psychologist, www.carynstark.com  Robert Crispin - Private Investigator, “Crispin Special Investigations” www.CrispinInvestigations.com Dr. Tim Gallagher - Medical Examiner State of Florida www.pathcaremed.com, Lecturer: University of Florida Medical School Forensic Medicine. Founder/Host: International Forensic Medicine Death Investigation Conference  Lisa Farver - Field Editor, Patch Media, Patch.com Chicago Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A little girl borrows her brother's bike to go just a few blocks. She's never seen alive again. Her body found soon after, and then somehow the case goes cold. Until now. Until now. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

In July of 1972, 49 years ago, a young girl by the name of Julie Hanson, age 15, borrowed her brother's bike to go to a baseball game. Julie never returned home. She was reported missing to the Naperville Police Department, and the department, the following day, put together an exhaustive search for Julie, along with members of the community. The bike was discovered on a gravel road off 87th Street and Knock Knoll Road.

That was the following day after Julie was reported missing. Can you imagine the parents when they hear the bike has been found, but no Julie? With me, an all-star panel to make sense of what happened to Julie Ann. First of all, Robert Crispin, former fed with the DEA in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area, cop, now head of Crispin Special Investigations at CrispinInvestigates.com, renowned psychologist joining us out of Manhattan, Karen Stark at karenstark.com. Ashley Wilcott, judge, trial lawyer, anchor, Court TV at ashleywilcott.com. Andrew Singer is joining us from Bodhi Technologies, the largest private forensic DNA laboratory in the U.S. and you can find him at boditech.com, B-O-D-E, Dr. Tim Gallagher, esteemed medical examiner for the entire state of Florida at pathcaremed.com,

senior lecturer, University of Florida Medical School in the Forensic Medicine Division and founder and host of the International Forensic Medicine Death Investigation Conference. But first of all, to Lisa Farver, field editor with Patch Media at Patch.com, joining us out of Chicago. Lisa, I want to go back to the day Julianne Hansen goes missing. What happened? Julianne Hansen was 15 years old when she borrowed her brother's bike to go to a baseball game. And, you know, she's 15 and she borrows her younger 12-year-old brother's

bike to go to the baseball game and she never returned. I know that, first of all, she was reported missing. The bike was then found. But when was she reported missing? She was reported missing. The bike was then found. But when was she reported missing? She was reported missing on July 8, 1972. She's reported missing, and then parents are crushed when they get the news, Oh, we found her bike. Where was the bicycle found, Lisa? The bike was found on a gravel road not far from where the family lived. So the bike was found at 87th Street and Knocknows Road in Naperville. What can you tell me about Naperville, Illinois?

Naperville is a suburb. It's roughly an hour or so outside of Chicago. And it's generally pretty well ranked for its family-friendly atmosphere, for its good schools. And it's a place where generally not a lot of serious violent crimes are reported. There have been, I'd say over the past, you know, since Hanson's death, there have been, you know, just I want to say maybe fewer than a handful of, you know, serious crimes of that nature reported in Naperville. What I know is that it was once a frontier post when the Wild West was being settled. And you get that far and Naperville was started as an outpost.

It's over an hour from Chicago. Very, very low crime rate. And to this day, the population is just a little bit over 100,000 for the whole area. It's a safer alternative. If you have to go in and work in Chicago, which is crime ridden, this is a spot where you want to raise your family. This is a spot that's safe, full of tree-lined neighborhoods, working parents, both parents typically working in that area, lovely homes, lots of good schools, not a place where you think your girl is going to be snatched off a bike. And then 24 hours later, you find the bike abandoned on a gravel road. And out to you, Lisa Farver, was the bike crumpled? Had it been in a crash

or was it just abandoned on the side of the road? Do we know? From what information I have from police, there was no indication that the bike showed any like extensive damage or anything like that. The bike was just found, from my understanding, abandoned on the side of the road. Oh gosh, Ashley Wilcott. See, if the bike had been crumpled up and that would give way to a whole different avenue of

investigation. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of the missing mom, Suzanne, who reportedly went for a bike ride on Mother's Day, and all that was left was the bike. And then speculation goes on about what may have happened. I think the whole scene was staged, but Suzanne Morphew still has not been found. All that's found is the bike, and it shows no sign that we know of of injury to the bike. So that leads you down a certain path of investigation, Ashley. Oh, it absolutely does.

First, when you talked about the parents, if I saw, God forbid, the bike and no child, I immediately in my gut would know something's wrong. Something has happened. But that is the crime scene. That is where law enforcement must start looking first to determine what's around the bike. Is there any type of wrapping from a piece of candy or anything that's been dropped? Is there any sign of a struggle? What's in the dirt? What's in the grass? Does it look like there were four footprints or just the two footprints of this beautiful little girl? That's the crime scene, Nancy. That's where you start. So upsetting for the parents living through this. What more do we know? Take a listen to our friends at Crime Online. 15-year-old Julie Hanson had typical small-town plans for her weekend. Her parents were away.

Her brother and sister were home, and there was a baseball game. That meant friends and boys. Hanson borrowed her brother's bicycle to go to the game, and she was seen leaving the home on the bike. She never made it. Her older sister reported her missing the next day. And, of course, it was perfectly natural for a 15-year-old teen girl to want to go see a boy's baseball game. And that leads to a whole other avenue of investigation.

Because you wonder, with the parents gone that night, was she planning to sneak off with a boy or a friend from school? So you've got to run down that path as well, Robert Crispin. Absolutely. You're looking at all her friends. You're looking at her relationships with people in school, friends she may be doing summer jobs with. You're looking at everybody associated with her in the beginning starting to move forward. And, oh, the guilt, Karen Stark, of the parents.

They go away for one night, and their daughter goes missing. Well, I mean, Karen Stark, of the parents. They go away for one night and their daughter goes missing. Well, I mean, Nancy, you have twins. Just think about what that's like for the parents. They would never have suspected that going away for this one night would lead to these kind of consequences. It's awful. Take a listen to more from our friends at Crime Online. The police, along with members of the community, launched an exhaustive search for the missing 15-year-old. The bike was found in a ditch on a gravel road.

In a cornfield just 100 feet away, Julie Hansen's body was discovered later that day. The teen had been sexually assaulted and stabbed 36 times. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. You know, I want to go to not only Dr. Tim Gallagher, the medical examiner for the entire state of Florida, but to Lisa Farver with Patch Media at Patch.com. Lisa, tell me about this location where her body was found. Did I hear a cornfield? Yeah, that's correct. From our understanding, her body was actually located in a, well, I believe a cornfield

nearby where the bike was found. You know, there's something about that too. Renowned psychologist Karen Stark joining us out of Manhattan today. It brings to mind the case of Molly Tibbetts, who was kidnapped, I believe raped, and then hidden, in a way, in a cornfield. And when you think about it, now Karen, I know you're in New York, New York City, but for those of you that didn't grow up in a rural area like I did, when you're in the middle of a cornfield, you can't see anything. The corn stalks are this close together, a foot apart, maybe two, for you to walk down between them. You can't see through them.

Someone takes this girl, this beautiful girl, out into a cornfield and rapes and murders her, stabbing, we know, at least 36 times. Delieving the body, the rape in a cornfield, Karen Stark, somehow being in that environment makes it even worse. She couldn't tell where she was. She didn't know which way to run. Horrible. And it adds another layer into thextaposition of that cornfield with the fact that this is a young girl who's being raped and murdered and how awful enough, but that he enjoyed the fact that there was this innocence of the cornfield and this young girl and that she was terrified. You can find them at pathcaremed.com. Dr. Gallagher, I learned this early on, but a good example that people could relate to would be the case of Travis Alexander, who was stabbed, we think, about 29 times by Jodi Arias before she shot him dead,

shot him in the hip. The medical examiner actually couldn't really make out the number of stab wounds because there were so many that some of them overlapped on each other. So you couldn't tell if one stab wound could be two or three stab wounds because the stabbing was on top of the other stab wounds. Could you explain that better than I am? Well, I'll give it a try, Nancy. It's true that when you have multiple stab wounds, some of them do overlap.

And not only would they overlap, you know, when we think about a stab, when we think about a knife going in and out, you know, in the same wound and out of the same wound. You know, but sometimes we can have a case where they drag the knife through the body, almost slicing through the body. And if you have a slicing wound that goes through four or five other wounds, it's very difficult to count the exact number of times a person's been stabbed. You know, the wounds generally congregate around vital organs of the body. So there may be multiple stab wounds through a single lung, 30 or 40 wounds through the heart. So the best we can do is estimate. But really, the description between 30 wounds and 20 wounds is you just know that there's a lot of wounds there.

This person was very angry. Can I ask you a personal question, Dr. Tim Gallagher? Sure. Do you have a family? I do, yeah. Including a wife and children? Well, I don't have any children. Do you and your wife ever talk about what you do for a living? Not one word. I was just listening to you talk, and I was just imagining you sitting over dinner. Maybe, you know, you had chicken out of the crock pot, and you're talking about overlapping stab

wounds. So many of them, you just can't tell how many there are. Do you guys ever talk about that? Well, you know, she's a doctor as well, but she does cancer patients. You know, she works with cancer patients. And her idea of morbid things are not my idea of morbid things. We do watch a lot of the forensic shows on television, but we don't really talk about my line of work as much as we talk about hers. Ashley Wilcott, what about you? All I have to say is I didn't marry an attorney, did I? So what I did, though, when my kids—

Neither did I, thank God in heaven. Right? Right? No, and listen, you know, in our world, regrettably, you're such a great victims advocate. In our world, this is not atypical. We see children get abducted. But what is not typical is these parents have been soothing for how long? 40 plus years? Having no idea what happened to their daughter. I'm asking you if you ever talk about these cases to your family. Of course. I've got children. You know, I've got three kids. Of course I do.

I probably talk too much. I never get into these kind of details. No way. I mean, Robert Crispin, I mean, I'm just curious. I never talk about details of crime cases to my husband or my children. Who besides us wants to hear about 36 stab wounds on a little girl? And then they overlap, so it made it really hard to tell just how many times she'd been stabbed.

I mean, that's very heavy. That's incendiary talk. Listen, we eat, sleep, and breathe this, Nancy, the people in our business. And it's nice to just come home and not talk about it and just disconnect. It really is. You know what my husband does? He's an investment banker. I tried to read his emails one time, Robert. I told you this. My eyes started bleeding. It was so boring. I couldn't take it. But I'm sure he does not want to hear about this. Let me get back. Let me get us out of the weeds and back in the middle of the road. I'm just curious because I never talk about details of cases when I'm not working the case.

I don't want it stuck in my children or my husband's heads. Okay, so the body is found in a cornfield. And I'm just trying to, if I was trying this case, I would convey it to a jury what this child, and yes, under the law, she is a child. She is a minor, went through being raped and murdered in a cornfield. But the search is on. Take a listen to Chief Robert Marshall with the Naperville Police Department. Conduct conducted a search of the area, found her body, and she was deceased and had been stabbed multiple times. Our department immediately began an investigation to find Julie's killer. Unfortunately, the offender was not immediately found.

And our department never in five decades gave up looking for julie's killer the last 49 years we've chased many leads identified many suspects and all were eliminated through the exhaustive investigation by our detectives can we get real just a moment, Lisa Farver, joining us from Patchy.com? You know it's got to be somebody from that area, maybe from even that neighborhood or two roads over or somebody that's in that neighborhood frequently like a delivery person or the newspaper guy, somebody that drives through there or again lives there. Who is going to know to snatch this girl right there in a spot where they had to believe nobody was going to see them doing the snatching and drag her into a cornfield? Who would know that other than someone that lives there or goes through there all the time, Lisa,

that kind of limits and narrows the suspect pool, does it not? Yeah, I think that that was what was particularly chilling when this took place for the community, because from what I've read at that time, you know, people in the area rarely locked their doors, you know, everyone just felt super safe. So I think the fact that this happened and it seems as though it was probably someone from the community might have

been one of the most chilling aspects of what happened. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we are talking about the brutal kidnap, rape, and murder of a teen girl that borrows her little brother's bike to go watch a baseball game a few blocks away. She never makes it to the game. She's abducted en route to the game. Her body found, raped, brutally stabbed at least 36 times, dead in a cornfield. Take a listen to our friend Rob Elgus, WLSTV, ABC7 Chicago. It was so tough then, and I think it's got to be hard for the family at this point because it brings it all back.

Tonight, Peggy Thompson's childhood friends are remembering 15-year-old Julianne Hansen and her family. She was very personable, a very sweet girl. She was only a couple years older than us, but she babysat some of the kids in the neighborhood. Nearly 50 years ago, in 1972, Julie Hanson was brutally murdered, her body found in a field near 87th and Modaff Road in Naperville. No one locked doors. We knew everybody, and then this happened, and I've

called it the end of the age of innocence because it immediately changed to a very fearful existence, especially for us as kids. That is exactly what Lisa Farver is telling us about at the time of this little girl's brutal murder. Again, you were hearing from our friends at WLS-TV. The case goes on, the search heats up. What do we know about the search efforts at the time, Lisa Farver? What did they do to try to catch the perp? At the time, I know that they, from my understanding, they did some pretty exhaustive what they were able to do at the time with the limited amount of research that they had. But the major developments obviously didn't happen until much later when technology kind of, you know, changed a little bit. Let me go to Dr. Tim Gallagher, medical examiner, joining us out of Florida.

Dr. Gallagher, we know that she was raped, according to the police report. When you examine a body, what do you find as evidence supporting the theory of rape? Well, there are two things. One of them you would look for bruising in the genital area, bruising around the vagina, bruising around the bones of the vagina. You'd also look for a torn tissue, you know, in that area, torn tissue within the vagina and within the anus. Additional places to look for are the lips. Look behind the lips to see if there's any trauma behind the lips as well and generally these days we would do a sexual assault kit and look for

semen evidence trace dna and other five clothing fibers that may have been left by the assailant let me go out to a special guest joining us, Andrew Singer of Bode Technologies, the largest private forensic DNA lab in the United States. You can find him at bodetech.com, B-O-D-E-T-E-C-H.com. Andrew, when you find sperm in or on the body and you look under a microscope, what does that look like? Well, believe it or not, Nancy, in most of these cases, we are not actually looking for the sperm. We are looking for the presence of foreign male DNA within these cases. And as we identify that, we are working to develop a DNA profile from that foreign evidence. And we separate that from the victim. And we take

that profile and put it into databases to try to figure out who that came from. So then let me back up to Dr. Tim Gallagher. I'm trying to figure out, I mean, I know what it looks like under a microscope because I've looked at it at the crime lab. But when you're looking at the body, how do you detect and identify sperm? Well, it's true. You can't identify sperm, but you could identify semen. And you know that the sperm is probably within the semen if it does exist. Right. Providing the person did not have a vasectomy, you would find a sperm within the semen. So typically we would find that on the inner parts of the thighs, in the pubic region of the victim, and around the anal area.

And what does the sperm, or as you say, semen, look like under a microscope? Well, semen in itself is a protein, you know, so there really is no description of it. There's no solid part of the semen. But the sperm within the semen would look like a single cell, like a football. It looks like a football with a big, long tail coming out of it. Okay, wait a minute. I thought it looked like a shrimp. A shrimp? No, well, for humans, for humans, it looks like a football with a big long, with a tail, with a big long whipped tail coming out of the back of it. It's the shrimp. Okay, you say football, I say shrimp. Let's move forward.

So you see that under the microscope. Now, sperm can live, as I recall, about 72 hours. It starts falling apart, literally. First the tail falls off, then the head falls off. More to my shrimp comparison. Do I have that much right? Well, it does live 72 hours under the right conditions, the right temperature and within the right fluid, yes.

But if it dries out, you know, on the leg of somebody, you know, it's going to be dead when that semen is dry. And, Andrew Singer, do you need it? Can you still get the DNA from it even if it's dried? Yes, you can. Yep. And most of these cases like this one, with proper collection and storage of the sample, obviously we can get DNA profiles off of it 30, 40, 50, even longer years after it has been collected. That's amazing, Andrew. That's amazing, Andrew.

That is amazing, Andrew Singer. So how do you store it, Dr. Gallagher, to make sure that somebody like Andrew Singer at Bodhi Technologies can get an ID one day, maybe even 50 years later? How do you have to store it and not screw it up? Well, moisture is the enemy of dna so you would have to store it in a dry area you know on a porous surface like uh like a certain types of paper that you can leave it on and store it in a dry area and it'll preserve itself very well okay now that is where i just learned another new thing dr gallagher i thought maybe I've been watching too much Dexter,

I thought you put it on glass slides, no? Well, you would put it on glass slides if it's fresh, if it's a fresh sample and the temperature is correct and you feel that there may be a motile or a live sperm, you know, within the semen. Otherwise, you put it on, did you say something akin to paper? Right. There's something called Watchman paper that you can put it on and it's very poor. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Could you spell that? Cause I couldn't understand you. Oh, sorry. Watchman, W H A T M A N N Watchman paper. We could place it on a Watchman paper and then store it in a dry area and that'll stay, uh, viable for, I mean, the DNA will not break down for decades

and decades. Okay. Give me a comparison so I can understand. What does Watsman paper look like? I'm imagining that blue paper, almost like a cloth material used to change oil with, and I'm sure that's wrong. What does Wats Watson paper look like? If you remember the old poster board, like oak tag, heavy cardboard, a gift box,

maybe something like a gift box lid. Yes, yes. Okay, now I understand. And how big is the paper, like two inches by two inches? Well, it comes in rolls, which is as big as you need it to be, you know. So, you know, it can come pre-cut in four by four cards. Four inch by four inch. Right.

But it can come in long rolls. Wow. It can come as big as you want. Did you know any of that, Jackie? Nope. Okay. Now, this is where you come in, Andrew Singer. Take a listen to Chief Robert Marshall.

People often call these type of cases cold cases. This was never a cold case for our police department. We continually investigated this case throughout those 49 years. We were all conscious of Julie's murder, looking for the killer. And we had Julie's picture on our desks and investigations for all these years. Throughout the years, the investigators that have worked this case have come, some have retired. And every one of us assigned to investigations took the opportunity to work on this case and look for evidence that would lead to the identification of Julie's killer. Karen Stark, you have been in my office many, many times at Court TV.

Just like as in the district attorney's office where I prosecuted, there's a lot of pieces of evidence there, photos, not gory crime scene photos, but for instance, I still have a photo in my office. It's a button the family of Travis Alexander, Jody Arias' murder victim, gave me. It's a button that they would wear. It's a picture of Travis Alexander. And I see that frequently when I open a particular drawer. There are, it's memories. And I'm thinking about these cops that kept Julianne's picture on their desks to remind them this case has not been solved. I mean, after you work on an investigation or

prosecution for a long time, you, even if your victim is dead, you get attached to the victim. You get attached to the mission of getting justice. I don't find that unusual at all. Neither do I, Nancy. And I do remember all those photographs that you had in your office. Doesn't surprise me because we're talking about the victim. And so often we remember the person that committed the crime, the perpetrator, but the victims stay with us. You know, we learned about them and their innocence. And like in this story, the cornfield, that vision that will never leave my mind, that picture of this innocent girl there. And so it makes perfect sense to me. They kept it there.

They wanted to remember her and they wanted to solve it. wanted his father. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. So Andrew Singer joining us from Bodie Technologies, the biggest private forensic DNA lab in the U.S. Andrew, let me put all sentimentality aside because this case is not going to be solved without somebody just like you, a DNA scientific expert. We keep hearing about how DNA has advanced since the time Julianne was raped and murdered. How has it? It's incredible, frankly. And I do actually want to commend the investigators and all of those involved in the case for properly collecting the DNA and storing it for all of these years,

holding out the hope that this case would eventually be solved. 20, 30 years ago, you were looking at needing DNA the size of bloodstain, the size of a quarter, if not longer, to be able to just type it and search it. And we've advanced so far where you can simply get DNA from just a few cells. And in this case, the way they were able to identify it is through true novel advancements and the way these DNA profiles are searched and to identify where the source of the DNA came from. So the DNA from the semen, from the sperm, that long ago on this little girl was properly collected, was at the crime lab, I mean at the morgue, was then saved, was then sent to the crime

lab. The chain of evidence was kept. And Robert Crispin, I nearly lost a serial killer because I could get him on one murder and the chain was not protected. The chain of custody. People think it's no big deal. But what happened in that case was the homicide detective, what did he do? He mislabeled the bag. Something was wrong with the label on the bag. We got the perps DNA. It was bagged and taken to the crime lab. But in the bagging, nothing happened to it. It wasn't contaminated. Just the name was wrong or the case number was wrong on that bag, and it ruined my chain of custody. And it will.

Chain of custody means that, for instance, Jackie, I'm sorry, but you're dead again. I find Jackie's dead body, and in comes Robert Crispin. He secures the scene. Crime techs come out. They take her clothing. They take it to the morgue, but they have to carry it properly to prove in court there was no contamination. Who finds it here has to sign the bag. I've got it and I'm leaving it with, let's just say, Dr. Tim Gallagher

at the morgue. Dr. Tim Gallagher performs his experiments on it. Then he signs off, I'm putting it in the locker. Then the cop that comes, the transport officer, as it is called, comes and picks that up, signs it, I'm transporting it to the crime lab. And when it gets to the crime lab, date, time, all of that on there, the crime lab person that accepts it signs it, and then the scientist signs it, and that would be Andrew Singer from Bodhi Technology. If you can't prove each and every step of that chain of custody, it cannot come into evidence.

Bam! There you go. So you save all this evidence. You finally get it in the hands of somebody like Andrew Singer and then what do you do with it, Andrew Singer? Oh, by the way, I had the DNA retaken. I went with the investigator to get the DNA, pursue it to warrant, of course. Then he and I transported it to the crime lab and handed it over. I didn't sign it because I was going to try the case and I couldn't cross-examine my own self. So he signed it. There you go.

We got the guy off the streets. Now, back to this. Andrew, when you get this sample, what do you do? How can you now look at that sample that was taken years and years and years ago, semen from a little girl, and then figure out. What do you do? Yeah, the first thing that we're doing is we are trying to understand the case itself and what samples arrived at our laboratory that potentially could contain DNA that's probative to the case. So in a case like this, if there was a sexual assault, there would potentially

be swabs from the vaginal area. We would collect those swabs, we would process that, and look for the presence of male DNA through a screening process that we have. And in the event that it's present, we then run it through our laboratory and we try to develop a DNA profile, separate it from the victim, and ultimately have that DNA profile searched against a national database to see if we can identify who provided that DNA sample. And in that case, it would be the suspect of our crime. Someone that has voluntarily or someone's relative that has voluntarily put in their DNA. You compare it to that database. Yeah. Before we get there, we're typically searching it against the national database that's searched by the FBI. And in this

case, and in many of these cold cases that we're using genealogy on now, it does not result in a match. So now there are, we are processing it, utilizing a second technology. And the technology is the same type of technology that's used by 23andMe and Ancestry and FamilyTreeDNA to develop your family trees. And in some of those databases, people are voluntarily putting their profiles in and enabling law enforcement to search against it.

Thank God. Yeah, it's really an incredible development in technology and the ability to identify new tools and new ways to identify these cold cases because there are hundreds of thousands of them, and many of them horrific like this case. Because of cops like Robert Crispin, medical examiners like Dr. Tim Gallagher, scientists with technology labs like Andrew Singer and Bodhi Technology. This is what happens.

Take a listen to our friends at KSTP. Her doorbell camera caught a group of police slowly walking down her block. She then took this photo of officers at a home right across the street. I'm a true crime fan. I listen to podcasts. So, of course, I had to see what was going on. But Stacey Maturne had no idea a nearly 50-year-old true crime was playing out right in front of her. Shocked. Yeah, not what I thought. 76-year-old Barry Welpley was arrested last week at his Moundsview home.

Did you ever see him at the house? Nope. Never. Never saw him once. We lived here five years. 76-year-old Barry Welpley was arrested last week at his Moundsview home. You ever see him at the house? Nope. Never. Never saw him once. We lived here five years. Most neighbors we spoke with say Welpley was quiet and stayed to himself. But one told me he was friendly, and she hopes the allegation isn't true. Glad he's caught. Stacey never did see her neighbor across the street, but she may hear the name on the mailbox on a true crime podcast.

You're not kidding about that. You were hearing Joe Mazon at KSTP and that name, Barry Lee Whelpley, 27 at the time. Julianne Hansen was yanked off her bicycle, dragged into a cornfield, raped and stabbed 36 times. Take a listen to Rob Elgus, WLS-TV, ABC7. Today, an incredible development in a decades-long cold case. We all have daughters, so we took this case personal from day one. Naperville police announcing they have arrested this man, Barry Welpley. The 76-year-old was living in Minnesota at this home. In 1972, Welpley was 27 and lived about a mile from the

Hansons. New DNA evidence helped crack the case. For Peggy Thompson and her childhood friends, there is relief and hope justice will finally be served. I personally am very thankful they finally got someone. I'm just disappointed that he lived free for 50 years. Let me go out to Lisa Farver, editor with PatchMedia.com at Patch.com. Lisa, from what I in Moundsview at the time of his arrest, a retired welder. What can you tell me? Welty was a retired welder living in Moundsview at the time of his arrest. When he, when he lived, he did live in Naperville when he was 27 years old, which was at the time of Hanson's death.

And at that time, he lived relatively close to where her family lived. What we all said at the beginning, this had to be someone that lived or passed through the area frequently. He lived within one mile of this little girl. Now, all these years later, finally, justice, a 76-year-old retired welder, Barry Lee Welpley, hid in plain sight all of these years following the brutal rape and murder of this little girl. May he rot in hell. Sadly, both of Julianne's parents have passed on. They did not live to see full justice, but don't worry. We will, God willing. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.