Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Missing Teen Girl's Body dug up at Serial Killer's 'House Of Horrors' ID'ed as Theresa Fillingim

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

Theresa Fillingim was almost 17 years old when she disappeared. She was living with her sister in Florida, trying to find a job.  Fillingim leaves for an interview and is never seen again. Now, the remains of the Florida teen found 41 years ago, buried on the property of a serial killer, have been positively identified. Three other bodies were also found.  Police said the teen’s remains were found on property owned by Billy Mansfield Jr.,  responsible for murdering at least five women in California and Florida. In 1982, Mansfield Jr. was sentenced to life in a California prison, where he remains today. With the help of the University of North Texas and the Virginia-based DNA company, Parabon Nano Labs, officials were able to positively identify Fillinghim through a DNA match with her sister. Joining Nancy Grace Today: Dale Carson - High Profile Attorney (Jacksonville), Former FBI Agent, Former Police Officer, Author: "Arrest-Proof Yourself, DaleCarsonLaw.com Scott A. Johnson, Forensic Psychologist (Minnesota), 32 years specializing in addressing sexual predators, Adjunct Professor: Florida Gulf Coast University, Author: "Physical abusers and Sexual offenders", ForensicConsultation.org  Paul Szych - Former Police Commander (Albuquerque, NM), APD Domestic Violence and Stalking Unit, Author: "StopHimFromKillingThem" on Amazon Kindle, StopHimFromKillingThem.com, Twitter: @WorkplaceThreat Dr. Michelle DuPre - Former Forensic Pathologist, Medical Examiner and Detective: Lexington County Sheriff's Department, Author: "Homicide Investigation Field Guide" & "Investigating Child Abuse Field Guide", Forensic Consultant, DMichelleDupreMD.com CeCe Moore - Chief Genetic Genealogist, Parabon NanoLabs, Inc., Parabon.com, CeceMoore.com, Facebook.com/CeCeMooreDNA, Twitter: @CeCeLMoore, Instagram: @CeCeMooreDNA  Jax Miller - News Writer, Oxygen.com, True Crime Author, Author: "Hell in The Heartland: Murder, Meth, and The Case of Two Missing Girls", Facebook: "RealJaxMiller", Twitter/Instagram: @RealJaxMiller  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Little did we know the investigation into a missing teen would uncover literally a graveyard, a burial ground. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. First of all, take a listen to our friends at WINK. Margaret Johns describes her younger sister, Teresa Teresa as your typical teenager. I said well you're going to get a job you're going to tell the line and she promised that she would because

she wanted to be with her sister. But after a couple of job interviews Teresa never came home. That was it. I never heard from her again. Wow okay maybe that was a different time and a different place, but to send a teen girl out on her own for an interview, I mean, I'm afraid to let Lucy even walk around the block by herself for Pete's sake, much less go on interviews alone. I mean, maybe if you drove her there to, let's just pretend Chick-fil-A or Burger King and watched her walk in and then waited for her to come out. Yes, I could see that. But to just send her out the door for a job interview, for a series of job interviews. I'm stunned about that.

I'm not stunned. This teen girl, Teresa Fillingham, never came home. What happened to Teresa? Just full of life, a lovely young girl. When you look at her pictures of her smile, it looks like she's just about to break into laughter. You can see it coming out of her eyes. How does a teen girl just disappear and you never hear from them again?

Again, I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Story. Thank you for being with us. Joining me in all-star panel, but first I want to go to a special guest joining us from Oxygen.com. It's Jax Miller. And she's a true crime author of

Hell in the Heartland, Murder, Meth and the Case of Two Missing Girls. That doesn't sound good. Of course, I'll have to read it from front to back. Hell in the Heartland, Murder, Meth and the Case of Two Missing Girls. OK, you got me at Murder, Meth and and two missing girls. Jax Miller, thank you for being with us. I want to talk about the disappearance of this girl, Teresa Fillingham, teen girl, just barely 17 years old when she walks out the door of her sister's home to go on a job interview. What do we know about her disappearance? You know, that's the thing. There really wasn't too many details out there. You know, I know her parents had looked for her. Her father was an

Alaskan state trooper, I read, and spent many years looking for her, but she just suddenly vanished. You know, nobody knew what happened. Was she a runaway? Did someone take her? You know, no one had these answers back then. You know, I'm just thinking this through, knowing that her father was in law enforcement. I bet he did a thorough search. But the reality to Paul Zeich joining me, former police commander in Albuquerque and author of Stop Him From Killing Them on Amazon Kindle. Paul, the search methods that were in place at the time Teresa Fillingen went missing are a far cry from what is in place now. Explain. Well, you know, back then it just involved getting as many people as you could get together and combing, you know, woods, walking together, you know, making sure you mark places that you're searching,

you know, maybe a helicopter flying over, but certainly not the technology that can be employed today, utilizing cell phone, you know, data and GPS coordinates and all these other things. So they were definitely hindered 40 years ago. As well as, say she was going to this job interview, let's just pretend, let's just pretend it's McDonald's. Did they have video surveillance? They do now. I mean, every square inch except the bathroom at McDonald's is covered in video surveillance. Thank heaven. Is there that? Is there surveillance video at red lights, red light cams. In Florida, there are tons of tolls.

You can't go anywhere without paying a toll. Now, when you think that through, it would be fairly easy to get video from those toll bridges, right? Or toll stops. Not then. What about it, Paul? Yeah, well, you're absolutely nancy um the the technology that we employ today i mean we even have real-time crime centers they're hubs for this type of information um it allows them to piece together the movement where somebody you know went next and and who they were with that's the big thing i mean uh in all the homicide cases I've worked, if you find if there's a dead female or missing female, you need to find who she was with last. And it's specifically what male. And some of that technology could have provided that back then. I mean, and now you immediately have an Amber Alert go out if there is a car involved.

It goes on to I mean, at Crime Online, we send out immediately when we hear about a missing person or a missing child. I mean, within minutes of the Amber Alert going out, it's out there on the media. Let's talk about the area. To Jax Miller joining us from Oxygen.com, what can you tell me about Spring Hill, Florida? So it's in central Florida, more to the west. It's not far from Hernando Beach in Hernando County. And, you know, it's known for its natural springs. It's a nice area. By all accounts, it's a nice, sunny area in Florida. lawyer joining us out of Florida near where this incident occurred but also former fed with the FBI as an agent author of Arrest Proof Yourself and you can find them at DaleCarsonLaw.com. Another thing about Spring Hills Florida very low population in comparison a little over a hundred thousand people living there. Now that's bigger than where I grew up in rural Bibb County.

It's not even part of a city. That greatly changes the search for this missing teen girl, Dale Carson. Agree or disagree? No, no, I absolutely agree, Nancy. When you have a low population density, there are a couple of reasons for that. One of them is obviously people don't want to be on top of one another in subdivisions. So the result is that things are spread out and you can have compounds and areas where you put up no trespassing signs and you don't allow other people to come. With that low of a population, you would think it would reduce the suspect pool.

What about it, Paul Zyke? Absolutely agree with you. You know, you're going to have, the more you can spread things out, the more search area that you have to cover, the less likely it is that you're going to find the individual, especially close to when the event occurred. Okay, another thing about Spring Hill, Florida, is it's got a very low crime rate. And it's interesting, Scott Johnson joining me, forensic psychologist joining us out of Minnesota, 32 years in connecting crime with psychology. He's the author of Physical Abusers and Sex Offenders.

You can find him at forensicconsultation.org. Scott, people move to places like Spring Hill, Florida to get away from crime. And then Teresa goes missing. There's really no place safe from crime. Well, no. And especially with the psychopath who's smart enough to stay under the radar people just don't see the evil they're you know so glib and superficial charming and all of that that when they move around people just would never suspect them nor would they likely have identified that person as suspected you know being in the area now i've actually been to this area before because who hasn't been to Weeki Wachee? That's where you see real mermaids. And when my daughter was completely in the throes of Ariel, in case you don't know, she's a mermaid.

I'm not going to be a total spoiler, but let's just say it has a happy ending. A mermaid that always wanted to be able to walk and run. She was all about mermaids. And there's a wiki watchie where you go in and you see a live mermaid show. Can I tell you how many times we saw that show? That is how I know about this area because of the close proximity. And it's that the area is stunning, but it is very, I don't want to say rural, because rural conjures up farms and cows. This is more like a wild jungle, very dense, densely wooded, palmetto trees and live oaks as you drive along the road. I mean, if somebody were out in those live oaks and those trees, it would be very difficult to find them. And to you, Dr. Michelle Dupree, joining us, former forensic pathologist, medical examiner and detective, also the author of Homicide Investigation Field Guide. Dr. Dupree, if she were out in that dense

forestation, there may very well be nothing left of her to identify in a matter of months. Nancy, that very well may be true. As you know, body decomposition is going to depend on the environment and the longer the person is out there, the harder it's going to be. The heat, the climate, as you just heard, Jack Smiller State people go there for the sunny weather. When I hear sunny weather, I think of rapid decomposition. That's just me. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. But right now, we've got a missing girl, Teresa Fillingham. She goes on an interview.

She moves in with her sister in Florida. The sister says, hey, you got to get a job. She's fine with that. She heads out on a job interview interview and she's never seen again. Now, take a listen to our friends at WTSP 10 Tampa. Her sister reported her missing to Tampa police back on May 16th. It was right before her 17th birthday. I'm confident that on that day she was already abducted and then murdered.

This is a photo of Teresa Caroline Fillingham, taken one year before she disappeared from Tampa. The only reason I'm doing this is because I don't want people to lose hope. You know, I find that really interesting. Everybody on the panel, jump in when you're ready, because statistics show that when someone is kidnapped, especially a child, which is anybody under 18, in this case, she was actually still 16. I just realized this because this was right before her 17th birthday. Statistics show when someone is

abducted and they are ultimately killed, they are killed within the first 72 hours after the abduction. So although the family didn't want to hear it at the time, by the time the search got underway, there was a strong likelihood that this 16-year-old girl was already dead. What about it, Paul Zyke? That's absolutely true. It's a sad, just horrific fact. And in all the responses through the last 30 years to child abduction that I've been involved in, I'll tell you, you never see a law enforcement response like you do during those types of calls. And that's because they know, you know, up in the high 90s, if we don't find this kid within the first hour or 72, you know, hours, that you're not going to find them again. And they're probably not going to be alive. And it's horrendous. There's another

problem, Nancy. Down in that area, you've got tourists in and out. So it's a transit area. And this child could have been picked up by someone taken out of state. Jill Carson, that's exactly the point I was trying to make. But you made it much better when I was talking about taking the twins, John, Dave and Lucy, to see the mermaids at Weeki Wachee. We were also there to swim with the manatee at crystal river and there was a huge tourist attraction um it was cold it was in the early spring which is the time to to see manatee and i remember we saw wikiwachi and swam with a manatee for several days straight.

Right in that area, wikiwachi is only 10 minutes away from where this occurred in Spring Hill, Florida. And then the manatee are about 30, 40 minutes from there. So people come from all over the country to go to those two locations. And they have RVs and campgrounds, and those RVs can transit all the way across the country. You know, it's very interesting and coincidental that you just said that, Dale Carson, because as we were talking about the first three hours, the first 72 hours after a child is missing,

it really hit home with me in two cases that I investigated and covered in the past. One was the case of Samantha Runyon. As I recall, Samantha was about three-ish years old. She was playing in the front yard of her grandma's house. She was, a guy came up, grabbed her out of the front yard and took off in a car. By the time the grandma could get out there, she went straight out. She was standing at the kitchen window. She was out there in 30 seconds. The guy was gone. And as it turned out, he murdered Samantha within three or four hours after he had raped and sodomized the little girl. Then what comes to mind is the case of Danielle Van Dam. She was abducted in California.

There was just a wild, frantic search, and they finally found remains identified by her Mickey Mouse earring that she loved so much. But her perp took her, and it was a neighbor, David Westerfield, that had been watching the house. He actually went in the house while they were in their sleep and got the girl. But he kept her hostage in an RV for days before he murdered her. My point is that if the child is not rescued in the first 70-ish hours, the child, if they're going to be killed, has been killed. So the fact that people are traveling to these areas in RVs, it's a tourist area,

that greatly changes it, the whole search. Another case that's right on point, let me go now to Scott Johnson, a forensic psychologist, professor of Florida Gulf Coast University and author of Physical Abusers and Sex Offenders. Scott, the case of Shasta Groney also sticks in my mind on this point. The person that murdered her little brother and her whole family was not from that area. Believe it or not, it was Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. And when you fly over Coeur d'Alene, you look down, you see nothing but beautiful emerald green. Completely rural.

But they were near an interstate. And this freak apparently drove by, spotted at a distance somehow her at an above ground pool and lay in wait and then massacred her family, took her and the little brother, ultimately killed him too. And she lived. My point, even when you are in a rural area with low crime, you're not necessarily safe. Okay, because the sexual predator, the sexual psychopath is always on the prowl. So wherever they are, they're always thinking, you know, where's the next game? Because for them, it's a game. And so wherever they are, they're always at risk for perpetrating another crime.

You know what? The way you just said that put a chill down my spine, and you are absolutely correct. This sends shockwaves through not only the community there in Florida, but the family of Teresa as well. Take a listen to our friends at WFTS. She didn't have a chance to start her life at all or do anything or accomplish anything. Teresa Fillingham was 17 and living in Tampa in 1980 when she disappeared. Her disappearance and my son's birth four years later and the subsequent disappearance of a kid

two blocks from my house that stepped off their bus and was never heard from again prompted me to leave the state and not raise my son in Florida. Okay, I've got to say to you, Scott Johnson, psychologist joining us, that sounds a bit like an overreaction, but I completely understand why the family of missing Teresa would just pack up and leave. It's just, what is that? Some people that aren't familiar with it would call it an overreaction, but I disagree. Right, because they're reacting

to a tremendous, obviously, trauma, and they pick up and move on. And sometimes that's the best they got for their sanity. You know, I spoke to, in depth, to the mother of a little boy who was shot dead. His case still hasn't been solved. It's Chucky Mock out of Warner Robins, Georgia. And for years and years, she stayed in the family home thinking that somehow she might get a tip and that if she moved, then that tip would no longer be possible. The other day we covered a case where the family didn't

want to leave because they thought the missing child would come home one day. And when they finally did leave, they moved their landline to a neighbor's home just in case the missing child, now grown up, would call home. And that just broke my heart, Paul. Right. And there's always that hope that somewhere your loved one will show up. And certainly there are those cases, but you kind of stay stuck in time waiting. And that's the downside. It's another victimization for the family who put their life on hold with hopes that one day their missing loved one will show up. And we know that 99% of the time, that's just not the outcome. Scott Johnson, you want it in? Go ahead. Yes. You know, at times, the sexual psychopath wants to find that isolated victim to buy

themselves time, i.e. that they won't be detected. On the other hand, for so many, that's part of the game, where they may actually abduct someone in broad daylight or knowing that people will be looking because that's part of the mystique for them is to, can I get away with this kind of attitude? Little did anyone realize at the time that multiple women seemingly went missing throughout the area brewing was this. Take a listen to our friends at Crime Online.

William Mansfield Jr., known as Billy, is the son of a convicted sex offender, William Mansfield Sr. From the mid-1970s, Billy Mansfield Jr. spent time in jail for sexually assaulting a minor. His sentence was cut short when he agreed to testify against a cellmate. Before long, Mansfield Jr. was back in prison for assaulting two teenagers. In addition to sexual assault, Mansfield Jr. was convicted of battery and kidnapping. After serving that sentence, Mansfield Jr. moved to California to work on a mushroom farm with his brother, Gary Mansfield. So what does a mushroom farm and a convicted sex offender in California have to do with a missing 16-year-old girl, Teresa, in Florida? And what does a woman named Renee Saling have to do with this?

Take a listen to our friend Dave Mack. Soon after arriving in California, Mansfield Jr.'s first murder took place, one of five he would be convicted of in 1982. At that time, the body of Renee Saling was recovered from a ditch. Saling, a 29-year-old mother, was sexually assaulted and then strangled. In the ensuing media coverage of Saling's murder, authorities received a tip. More bodies might be found on a Florida property

that the Mansfield brothers owned. Acting on that information, police recovered four sets of remains on the property owned by the Mansfields in Florida. That is the connection to Florida. Joining me from Oxygen.com is Jax Miller. Jax, again, thanks for being with us. So tell me about this registered sex offender on a mushroom farm in California.

What do we know about him? So he was kind of living where he worked. It was almost like a compound kind of thing. He was living with his brother, Gary, in Santa Cruz. And shortly after, that's when he met Renee at a bar in December 1980. So that's what we know about that much of it. And it wasn't until Renee's body was found and then they started looking for Billy and his brother. That's when the tipster called from Florida and says, yeah, you might want to look at Billy's property back here in Florida.

You know, that's a call that nobody wants to hear. To you, Dale Carson, to find out that a sex predator with a horrible criminal history has been let out. Then you find a body, a dead body of a woman lasting with him, and then you get

the call, oh yeah, you know what? He's got a remote property in Florida. Better check it out. That's enough to turn your stomach over in a flip-flop. Well, you're exactly right. Because particularly if the property ends up being in a fairly rural area where not many other people have access. And then you begin to process whether or not there might be evidence of other homicides in that particular area, as we now learn was specifically the Cakes. So in addition to Renee Salling in California, as you heard, acting on that tip,

cops head to Florida. Florida authorities in on it as well to uncover a virtual burial ground. Take a listen to our friends at Crime Online. Of the four sets of remains found on the Mansfield property in Florida, two were identified fairly quickly. The first to be identified was a woman named Sandra Jean Graham, who was 21 years old when she disappeared in 1980. The second to be identified was 15-year-old Elaine Ziegler from Ohio. She disappeared while camping with her family in Florida. Two additional bodies could not be identified. Court documents revealed that Mansfield Sr., Mansfield Jr., and Gary Mansfield all sexually assaulted the victims.

Mansfield Jr. then killed and dismembered them. Have to decide where to start with all of that information. But to you, Scott Johnson, you've got three devils straight from hell. The devil and two minions. Three guys related are sex attacking and murdering women systematically and then burying them. I mean, what happens in the mind of a perp when they get with other perps? I've always noticed this. I've noticed that defendants will do things with other like-minded evildoers that they may not do on their own. But somehow the three of them, working together, thought it was okay to kidnap women, torture them, rape them, sodomize them, murder them, and bury them on their own private burial ground.

Right. And so once we have the social support, and in this case, the familial support, now people are more brazen, more emboldened, and they likely become more sadistic because now they have to kind of outdo each other, but they've got each other for support. You know, that is a nightmare for somebody like you, Dr. Michelle Dupree. Well, maybe not. This is your line of business. So in this remote Florida rural outpost, four bodies so far have been found.

How do they know by just looking at them, because they're totally skeletonized, that they're all women? And how from just the body alone could you make an identification without DNA? Nancy, those are very good questions. The way that we can tell what the sex of the bones that we find are by looking at certain bones. The jawline, for one, we can look at the pelvic bone, which is really a giveaway because, you know, women are built so that they can have children. A male's pelvis is much different. We can also look at other characteristics of the body or of the bones. And one of the things that we often do is we try to look at the general, you know, height or weight

of the bones to match them up with those that might be missing. Do men's bones actually weigh more than women's bones? They do vary slightly, of course, because men are typically larger. But the long bones are typically larger in males than they are in females. Again, as well as the skull is made very differently. And you can determine that by looking at it. You said a male skull is different from a female skull. Did you just say that? I did. So let me guess guess is the brain cavity for a female much bigger than a male it certainly should be nancy but it's not typically just curious um now back to you see the guys on the panel i don't think they even got that but um dr michelle Dupree. It's working. Dr. Dupree. It takes a while.

I've accused my husband of having a hamster in his head running on a wheel, and that's what makes the brain work. Okay, but he takes it in as a good sport. Dr. Dupree. You know, Nancy, going back to what Scott said earlier about the familial problem with this behavior. I often see that as a nest of people because when you observe that conduct in other family members, you tend to engage in it. And that's what makes these folks so dangerous

because they have a propensity for this behavior and they have a skill set that is occasioned by repeated acts of this nature. Okay, call me crazy, but to you, Scott Johnson, I agree with what he just said, Dale Carson. And in our home, I mean, after I prosecuted with every miscreant in Fulton County, inner city Atlanta, dopers, johns, killers, I swore like a sailor. But when we had children, I said, David Lynch, do not curse in front of them ever. And I went clean.

It's hard. Because what you do, I mean, your children are going to do the same thing that they see you do. It's just that simple. And I know a curse word is a pretty minor thing, but it extends to what Dale Carson is saying. If you grow up with that and your family's doing it, it's just part of your familial

indoctrination. Right, and especially if we're objectifying women as sex objects, or talking openly about the use of pornography or just, again, how we degrade women that we're around. And again, the minute you have that social or familial support, you've got a monstrous situation because many of our sex offenders don't have direct support for what they do. In this case, you've got families supporting what they do. And joining in. So, Dr. Michelle Dupre, I never got a clear answer. Inch per inch, does a male skeleton actually weigh more than a female skeleton?

Not just because it's bigger, but is it more dense? Does it weigh more? Well, again, Nancy, it depends on the age of the person and all of that. But typically, it does weigh slightly more, yes. Interesting. Never knew that. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. So now we've got four dead bodies.

They're skeletonized. Now, Dr. Dupree explained how you can tell it's a woman. But how on just a skeleton can you tell the ID, Dr. Dupree? Well, oftentimes you cannot tell the ID, Nancy, just from the bones themselves. They would have to be analyzed. There would need to be some DNA. Well, how about the teeth? Yes, perhaps dental records.

But then remember, you have to have an idea of who that person is before you can ask to compare dental records. Yes, like fingerprints. You can find a latent print at the crime scene, but you've got to have somebody to compare it to. Yes, and there's no database in the sky for dental records. I was just going to say, that would be quite an advancement in criminal law if in the missing files we had dental records, but that would require when someone goes missing that their dental records be put in a certain data bank. That has not happened yet. Now, even though all the remains have not yet been identified, suddenly a breakthrough. Take a listen to our friends at WTSP.

Detectives tell us that back in 1981, four sets of human remains were found on the Mansfield family's property located in Spring Hill. Now, two sets of those human remains were identified fairly quickly, but the other two, that was a different story. They were sent to several different labs and investigators tried hard to figure out who exactly those human remains belonged to. Now, fast forward to 41 years later, Teresa Fillingham's remains have now finally been identified. And from our friends at WINK, W-I-N-K. Johns and her family heard nothing for 42 years until last July when she got a call from the Hernando County Sheriff's Office.

Dropped the bomb on me and said that we think we might have your sister's remains. Those remains were found in 1981, along with those of four others in the backyard of convicted serial killer Billy Mansfield Jr.'s family home. It wasn't until last year that Teresa's were identified. Margaret Johns tells 8 on Your Side human remains found at this Spring Hill home belonging to the family of convicted serial killer Billy Mansfield have been identified as her missing 17-year-old sister. Neighbors called it a house of horrors. Listen to Hour Cut 7 from WFLA. Neighbors called it a house of horrors.

Court documents describe the torture that took place here. In October 2020, the killer's brother, Gary Mansfield, tipped off deputies to search the property after they arrested him on drug charges. John says last July, the Hernando County Sheriff's cold case detective reached out to her. We're looking for somebody who may have lost a sister in 1980 in Tampa, Florida or Hernando County area and I went, yeah. You are hearing Teresa's sister recalling when she heard we're looking for somebody who may have lost a sister in 1980 in Tampa, Florida or Hernando County.

And she thought, yeah, that's going to be my sister. Joining me right now is a very special guest, a DNA expert, specialist Cece Moore, Chief Genetic Genealogist at Parabon NanoLabs. So happy to have you, Cece, as always. Explain what happened. So Hernando County submitted the unidentified human remains from that site to Parabon. And at our partner lab, we were able to analyze that very degraded DNA. We used whole genome sequencing. And then our incredible bioinformatic scientists repaired that degraded DNA, extracted out that bacterial contamination that you can see when bones have been in the

environment for a long time. They prepared a file that could then be uploaded to the GEDmatch website and compared against the 1.5 million people approximately that are participating in that site. Then we get a match list, people who share significant amounts of DNA with that unknown girl. That's where my job starts. So when I looked at that match list, I was thrilled because at the top of that list, we had a handful of second cousins. So if you get second cousins, that's terrific. It means that they will share great grandparents with that unknown Jane Doe and not only those I had another handful of relatively close matches meaning third cousins approximately so we don't have to go too far back in the family tree to find that common ancestor

and then come forward and so this was a very promising case for investigative genetic genealogy. Guys, if you've never heard of Cece Moore, she is incredible. She is with Parabon Laboratories, nanolabs, at parabon.com. And she is at cecemoore.com, C-E-C-E, more.com. Cece, I couldn't understand every single thing you said. I would have to break that down word for word. But what I think you said in regular people talk is that you

didn't have Teresa, the 16 year old girl's DNA on file. But when you took, when they took the DNA from the skeletonized body, you put it in to GEDmatch with over a million people that are on the database. Now, you do that because it's not protected. For instance, Ancestry.com. An investigator can't log into that because it's private. But you can get into GEDmatch. And you did. And you didn't find a match to Teresa herself, but you find startling similarities and deduce that it is a second cousin related to Teresa because they're in GEDmatch. Then you have

a family to go by. And then I guess the procedure after that will be to go to them and say, do you have someone missing? Is that how it works, Cece? Actually, no. When you have this much data to work with, you almost never have to reach out to those matches. I just have to build their family trees,

find the patterns, the commonalities, and hopefully common ancestors between the matches, between the people that share DNA with her. Because the only reason people would share significant amounts of DNA with her is if they had common ancestors. So these second cousins shared about 3% of their DNA. That translates to about a second cousin relationship. But it's not just those matches, it's the additional matches on the

list. And so I was able to reverse engineer her family tree from building the family trees of the people who share DNA with her. So it's building back in time, and then flipping that tree upside down, doing reverse genealogy, coming forward in time. And I found matches that connected to three of her grandparent lines. So that's optimal. And you have that much data that you can piece it back together. You know, we all have unique family trees other than our full siblings.

And so there's going to only be one family that has that unique set of ancestors. And so that led me right to her parents, their marriage, and then I found her birth certificate in California. Fortunately, out here in California, we have a public birth index. So I was actually able to find her name. Cece Moore, has anybody told you today, you're incredible, you're amazing? I'm curious.

Thank you. Very early where I am, so I haven't heard it, but thank you so much. You mean so much coming from you. I bet the people that know you well have probably begun to take your genius for granted, but it's people like you that

crack cases like this. So in addition to what Cece is telling us from Parabon NanoLabs, we also now know who is the rat. It was another brother of this bunch who caught a drug charge and for some type of lenient treatment, ratted out the burial ground that yielded at least four bodies. Take a listen to our friend Dave Mack. Billy Mansfield Jr. and Gary Mansfield were arrested in Nevada. Gary Mansfield agreed to cooperate with the authorities and testify against Billy Mansfield. Mansfield Jr. was convicted and

sentenced to 25 years to life behind bars. He also pleaded guilty to murdering the four women and girls recovered on the Mansfield property in Florida, as well as an attempted sexual battery on a fifth victim. Mansfield Jr. remains in prison at the California health care facility in Stockton. He's serving his sentence in California because that's where his first murder, that of 29-year-old mother Renee Saling, took place. We're talking about Gary Mansfield and Billy Mansfield Jr. But believe it or not, there's a Billy Mansfield III. Take a listen to our friends at WFLA. Billy Mansfield III is now living in Michigan with his family far from Florida and the home he spent much of his childhood. A place he says now is a graveyard. Personally, I think there's a lot.

I just can't see how somebody that could do that is going to stop at one. And if there was four and five, if you didn't stop at one, you ain't stopping at four and five. He does hope, however, that investigators continue to search the property for bodies, a place he once called home. As do I. It's hard for me to believe that they stopped at body number four. We wait as justice unfolds, but for now, the family of teen girl Teresa Fillingen gets the end of the story.

Nancy Grace Crumb, Story Signing Off. Goodbye, friend. story. Nancy Grace Crumb story signing off. Goodbye. This is an I heart podcast.