Criminology - Holly Cassano, Michella Welch, and Jennifer Bastian

Episode Date: November 10, 2018

In this episode, we are profiling more cases solved in 2018 through the use of DNA and genetic genealogy. We discuss the 2009 murder of 22-year-old Holly Cassano in Mahomet, IL. We also discuss two cases somewhat connected in Tacoma Washington. 12-year-old Michella Welch was murdered in March of 1986. 5 months later, 13-year-old Jennifer Bastian was murdered. The murders of Holly Cassano and Michella Welch were solved this year using DNA and genetic genealogy. Jennifer's murder was solved in 2016 but wanted to profile her case because of the strange connection between her murder and that of Michella. You can help support the show by going to patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. I'd like to welcome everyone to episode seven, season four of criminology. More if we're really moving through this season, season four. And, you know, we're getting close to the end, but we still have some really fascinating cases to cover. And I can't wait to dive into the cases that we've selected for this. episode. But before we do that, let's take a quick minute to thank our Patreon supporters. I want to give shoutouts to Poppy Englehart, Lindsay Hughes, Alexander Garza, Sabina

Zablowski, and Denise Allen. So huge shout out to all of you folks for choosing to support the podcast. And a big shout out to everybody that continues to support us month after month. It really makes a huge difference. Your Patreon donations really go a long way to help us bring these episodes to you. So thank you. If you'd like to receive early commercial free access to new episodes, you can do so by visiting patreon.com slash criminology. And just a quick reminder, you can find both of our books based on the podcast out now on Amazon.

Criminology True Crime Podcast Presents the Case of the Zodiac Killer. and Criminology True Crime Podcast presents the Golden State Killer. Both are available in ebook, Kindle, or Paperback, and you can find them on Amazon and at other online booksellers. All right, Morf, it's time to get into this episode. Now, there are a lot of cases, many cases that continue to be solved in 2018 with the help of Parabon, Jedmatch, and genetic genealogy. and we're going to touch on two of them in this episode. The cases we'll be discussing today are ones that before they were solved, a lot of people may not have been familiar with.

The circumstances and victims of these cases may be different, but the thing that links them all together is that the killers in these cases were identified years after the crimes, and literally after the killers thought that they would get away with murder. Today we'll be discussing the murders of Holly Casano and Michelle Welch. And the first case up is the case of Holly Casano. Holly's 2009 murder in Muhammad, Illinois, was a brutal and bloody one. Muhammad is a city, almost 150 miles south of Chicago.

Holly was a 22-year-old single mother who was hardworking and energetic. She wanted to make the best life she could for her 17-month-old daughter Alexis. Her days as a single mother were long and tough. between taking care of Alexis and holding down a full-time job as a cashier at a local supermarket. But the outgoing and friendly young mother was more than capable of the challenge. Holly was unlike a lot of women her age. While many of her friends drove sporty cars or SUVs, Holly's method of transportation was a twid, a minivan.

Holly was a pretty young woman with light brown hair and blue eyes. She stood about five foot five. Her outgoing and bubbly personality made her popular at her cashier job at the Meyer store in Champaign, about 10 miles from her home in Muhammad. But being a cashier wasn't Holly's dream job. She really dreamed of teaching children. But for the time being, Holly was doing what she could to support herself and Alexis. Although Holly was a single mom, her mom, Tony, often helped her out and watched Alexis when she could. on Sunday, November 1st, 2009, Holly had to work the night shift at the supermarket.

Alexis stayed the night at Tony's house. Holly worked an uneventful shift and she got off around 10.15 p.m. But since she wasn't in a hurry to head home, she talked to some fellow employees for about 30 minutes before she left at 1045. Holly arrived at the mobile home where she lived in Candlewood Estate at, around 11 p.m. She popped the DVD into the player as she made herself comfortable in her bed. At 11.16 p.m., Holly sent a text to a friend that read, hey, but the friend didn't see it and didn't reply. The next morning, on Monday, November 2nd, Tony tried to call Holly but got no response.

Since she only lived a few blocks away, she decided to take a drive over to Holley's. As Tony walked up to the front door, she found it. slightly ajar and walked in. There was no way she could ever be prepared for what she was about to find. Tony found Holly's lifeless body lying on her bedroom floor, covered in blood. The TV was playing softly in the background. Holly was lying flat on her back with her arm spread as if she were posed. In shock, Tony raced to the phone and called 911. The Champaign County Sheriff's Department received the call at 1038 a.m. And police and medical personnel were dispatched to the scene. The The dispatcher told Tony that she had to exit the house, but Tony couldn't pull herself away from

her daughter's lifeless body. As police arrived and entered the home, Tony finally made her way to the front door and sat down crying on the front steps. Holly's mom, Tony, was devastated. And that's totally understandable. If you're a parent, this has to be the number one nightmare scenario, finding your own child murder. And years later, Tony talked about just how horrible an experience that was for her. What I saw was the worst thing ever. No NCIS, no law and order, no, none of those shows that you see on TV could compare to the images that I have in my head every day. Once police stepped into Holly's home, they saw for themselves just how bad it was.

There was blood all over Holly's room. And as they photographed Holly's body, there was no doubt that she had been savagely stabbed repeatedly. Later at the autopsy, at least 60 stab wounds were counted. Based on the amount of stab wounds, police knew that the killer had attacked in a frenzy. The autopsy also revealed that Holly had been sexually assaulted. And they were actually able to determine that the sexual assault happened after the murder. So they knew they had a very dangerous and disturbed killer on the loose.

As police looked around the home, they found other areas of blood which turned out not to be Holley's, and there was a lot of it. Half dollar-sized drops of blood indicated that the killer had been injured in the attack, most likely by the blade of the knife used to stab Holly. Police carefully collected evidence, knowing that the killer's blood had DNA

that could one day solve their case. Police questioned Holly's neighbors, friends, and coworkers, and those closest to her, but no good suspects were developed. They also looked at local sex offenders and criminals whose M.O. might match the killer in Holly's case, but no arrests were made. Along the way, several DNA samples were taken to exclude people as being responsible for Holly's murder. The killer's DNA profile was loaded into various law enforcement DNA databases, but there were no matches to anyone in the database.

As time went on, police grew frustrated. They knew that they had the link to the killer in evidence. And if they found him, they could solve this case. But the DNA evidence was useless without someone to match it to. One thing that police were able to learn about the killer through lab analysis was that the killer was Hispanic. But that wasn't a whole lot to go on. And they knew that they would need more to lead them to Holly's killer. In February of 2018, the Champaign County Sheriff's Department reached out to Parabon Nanolabs,

who was doing some unbelievable work with DNA and creating snapshots of criminals based on DNA profiles. In May of 2018, Parabon sent the Sheriff's Department their finished snapshot report, which verified that the suspect was indeed Hispanic, and it also provided eye and hair color. But while all of this was helpful, it wasn't enough to lead police to a suspect. By this time, the arrest of the Golden State Killer suspect, Joseph DeAngelo, was making headlines across the country. And the genealogy used to help identify him got the attention of investigators in Holly's case. They asked Parabon to use genetic genealogy to try and pinpoint a specific suspect. Parabon went to work on the genetic genealogy, and they uploaded the DNA profile of the suspect to Jedmatch.

They started doing their family tree mapping, and by August, the job was completed. The path had led to one suspect. When Parabon provided the name of the person most likely to be the donor of the blood at Holly's crime scene, they were interested in it for multiple reasons. The man had lived in the same mobile home park as Holly, and he also had a criminal record, but they were surprised to see that he had no DNA on file. Police put him under surveillance and followed him for two days, hoping he would discard something that they could obtain his DNA from.

They finally picked up a cigarette butt that he threw down. Police fast-tracked the analysis of that DNA and verified that it matched Holly's killer, without a doubt. On Tuesday, August 28, 2018, police arrested their suspect. Well, welcome you to Champaign County Sheriff's Office. With me today, I have Sheriff Dan Walsh and State's Attorney, Julia Reitz, as well as you'll notice various members of the Sheriff's Office, the investigations team, and we have Tony Casano with us here today. On November 2nd, 2009, the Sheriff's Office began

investigating the death of 22-year-old Holly Cassano. At approximately 6.15 p.m. yesterday, August 28, 2018, the Sheriff's Office arrested Michael F.A. Henslick without incident or resistance in the parking lot of the Marketplace Mall and Champaign. The bond on his arrest warrant is $10 million. Henslick is currently in the Champaign County Jail scheduled to be arraigned at 1.30 this afternoon. In February of 2018, Champaign County Sheriff's Investigator sought the services of Parabon Nanolabs. Parabon is a DNA technology company in Virginia. Law enforcement agencies across the country use the company's snapshot DNA analysis service to advance investigations when the traditional DNA methods failed to produce a match.

In May of 2018, we received the snapshot phenotype report which produce trait predictions for the associate person of interest in our case. In June of 2018, CCSO again turned to the services of Parabond to make use of their newest snapshot service offering called Genetic Genealogy. Genetic genealogy uses advanced DNA testing in combination with innovative genetic analysis, sophisticated identification techniques, and traditional genealogical methods to establish the relationship between an individual and his or her ancestor. For forensic investigations like ours, it's used to generate highly informative leads as to the possible identity of an unknown victim or offender.

In the investigation of the murder of Holly Casano, Parabond submitted a genetic profile created from our suspect's DNA, collected at the crime scene, to a public genetic genealogy database for comparison. The goal of this process is to locate individuals who share significant amounts of DNA with our person of interest. Genetic matches were found in this case. These genetic matches then served as clues to inform traditional genealogy research, such as creating a family tree, to have matches back to a set of possible common ancestors. In our case, this was accomplished through diligent and detailed analysis by using online genealogy databases, newspaper articles, public family trees, obituaries, and other public records. After which, traditional descendancy research was employed by Parabon staff to establish the number of possible identities. entities of the unknown subject here. Additionally, other information such as age, location, triangulation between the matches and or ancestry and phenotype or trait predictions were used

to narrow down the possibilities before the final list of leads was produced. Champaign County Sheriff's Investigators took the very compelling and extensive genealogy research and used traditional police work to continue the investigation whereupon Michael Henslick was identified as a suspect. I'd now like to turn it over to Sheriff Dan Wals. Thank you, Chief. As many of you know, this case has troubled the Sheriff's Office for years. Many investigators have worked on it since it occurred and treated it like Holly was a member of their own family. Certainly, Holly's mom, Tony and Holly's daughter, Alexis, have become members of our family. First, I want to compliment and thank all of our investigators.

They've worked on this for many, many years. Frankly, over the weekend, some of them actually took their own time and began working the investigation. I am going to repeat a little bit of what the Chief Deputy told you because I am very very very, very, very impressed with the Parabon worked on this case. As he told you earlier this year, we contracted with an advanced DNA testing company called Parabon Nanolabs to give us a profile of their suspect. They gave us things like ethnic, like the background, eye color, hair color, et cetera. We then paid them to do further genealogical study. They warned us that they could come back with absolutely nothing. As Alan said, they used DNA databases, other open public records, including birth records, obituaries, marriages,

even newspaper information to do this research. They did amazing work. They tracked the DNA ancestors literally back to the 1800s, and then from that, work forward to the present, building a family tree. Friday afternoon, Parabond called us, gave us an oral and a written report that gave us a potential suspect. As I said, over the weekend on their own time,

some of our investigators began working in this case. They obtained discarded DNA from Michael Henslick. On Monday, they all began working it again. We basically have been following Mr. Henslick for almost two days. Monday and Tuesday, we obtained more discarded DNA from him at this time. We took the samples to the state police crime lab on Monday, and amazingly, the lab gave us results within 24 hours. I have never, ever seen anything like that before.

As I said, we've been following him for most of the Monday and Tuesday with Ms. Reed's help. And Mr. Ziegler's help, they went to Judge Dufanus, got us on the restaurant with about $10 million. As Alan told you, we arrested on Tuesday evening outside a marketplace mall without incident. He has been interviewed. Several search warrants were executed last night in the early morning hours of today. Over the last few days, our investigators have worked many and many hours on this case. I can't go into a whole lot of detail about the case, but I will tell you, Holly and Henslick both

lived in Candlewood Estates in November of 2009. They both attended Muhammad High School at the same time for a couple of years. Holly and Arresti did know each other as they had mutual friends and acquaintances, but that was the extent of the relationship. I assume you're going to ask me what's the discarded DNA. I will tell you that Arresti was a smoker. He was also a litterer. And that's all I have to say, Ms. Reitz. This has been a very long process, and we wish we could have come to this conclusion earlier,

but technology certainly has played a significant role in us being here today, as well as really good detective work, work on behalf of, on the part of the sheriff's office and everyone involved. I think also it's important, again, to note our appreciation to the Illinois State Police lab and technicians who worked so hard to get us the answers on such short notice. So at this time, the defendant, Michael Henslick, will be, court today at 1.30 to be arraigned. Of course, it's important to note that all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Mr. Henslick is going to be charged with four counts of

first-degree murder, those allege different mental states, but they all essentially allege that he committed the acts that caused the death of Holly Casano. Those are offenses that are punishable by from 20 to 60 years incarceration. As it is first degree murder, he would not be eligible for day-for-day good time if he were to be convicted. Mr. Henslick has a criminal history. I believe I'm sure that those that you have questions about that situation and questions about why, based on that history, he had not been required previously or had not previously submitted his DNA sample. His first conviction came in 2009. frankly at or around the time of Holly's murder, he was at that time placed on what's called

First Offender Probation for a possession of Controlled Substances Charge. He had no prior criminal history prior to that. So first offender probation is a standard sentence in that matter. And under the statute, if you are placed on first offender probation, you are not required to submit a DNA sample as you are in regular felony probation. So at that, that time. As it as a statute. Right. You're not required to submit a DNA sample.

And so he was not ordered at that time to submit that DNA sample. He essentially was under the radar until about 2015, early 2015, when he was stopped for a traffic violation. He had close to 60 grams of cannabis on him and a small amount of cocaine. At that time, he was charged again with possession of those controlled substances. He failed to appear in court numerous times. That case went on based on those failures to appear and warrants being issued, et cetera, et cetera.

Ultimately, he was convicted and placed on standard probation. As a term of that probation, he was ordered to submit that DNA sample. However, he never appeared at the probation office and was considered an absconder. So a petition to revoke his probation was filed. Again, the process went on where he failed to appear. He bonded out, et cetera, et cetera. Ultimately, he was resentenced on that probation violation to more probation. And again, failed to appear at the probation office and continued to fail to comply with the court orders.

And so, again, a petition to revoke his probation was issued in that case and actually is pending. He did appear in court on Monday on that matter. He also had two other pending matters, which he appeared in court on Monday for those being felony domestic violence cases. And again, in those matters, repeated failures to appear during the course and the process of that case. And so Mr. Henslick has been on our radar, but we've had no information of his involvement in Holly Casano's death until the information came forward. forward through the DNA processing. And so at this point, again, he will be charged in court today with four counts of first degree murder and we will be proceeding.

Again, I very much appreciate all of the hard work of everyone from the sheriff's office, ISP, and the technicians and scientists that have made this, in my opinion, a very strong case. So to review how we ended up going to Parabon is a combination of things. I will tell you that these detectives are trained and state of the art. conversations and when duane ralts to be honest with you has has been a significant lead in this in his case working with the local uh group and a training that was even before the the california break and that came out of the dna case there was conversations that took place about potentially chasing down leads in this regard if you remember back in 2015 i believe we released the press release

that indicated that we had done a different type of DNA analysis where we tried to do some trait and heritage stuff. So these gentlemen, men and women both have been chasing that kind of avenue for a long, long time. And as the technology has progressed and their ability to kind prod us as administrators say, hey, we want to try this. Can we get some money? Can we do. And to their credit, that we were able to pull this off. So do want to highlight that fact that Detective Duane Roelsoy played a major role in that. When was the, so we submitted this one in February, right the first one to get the trait and then we get the that report back in may and then i think it was june after we after the paravon educated us into the genealogy process is a learning curve for us there

were words and there's still words in what i read to you today that i don't understand but these folks do and they did a great job so the me the question is who followed them and how do we end up with the cigarette butt and essentially just part of the law enforcement process these guys is their job is to keep an eye on them and who ended up making the arrest it actually ended up being Captain Shane Cook because as you see today, he's the only one in uniform of that group standing on the wall. So, you know, again, things happen and opportunities take and present themselves, and sometimes we can plan and plan and plan until the end of the day, but it doesn't always work out that way. So he's asking, there's been tips and continuously tips. And as you can see

from a bumper sticker sitting on the front of here today, we've asked for tips and we've had those stickers out on the cars and they've continued to come in. Because of the way this has gone so fast, I can't say that we've been able to go back and see if that was a name we had or where it plays out the whole deal. Bottom line is we can't do our job without the use and the assistance of your business and the community and all of us working together. And now, as we learn about advances in technology and science and being able to put that into play, we're excited about that. There are literally, what, 2,000 people maybe living in that, in Candlewood Estates. So we obviously didn't talk to all of them. They all were not suspects. Somebody shut me up

if I start off the wrong path, I don't believe we ever got any tip that would indicate this gentleman that was involved in the homicide. I want to say one other thing about the interview, because I watch these wizards at it. They're very good. It's not like when you watch NCIS on TV,

and the NCIS guy walks in, slam something on the table and says confess, and he confesses it all out there. There's really an art to get the guy to talk, continue to talk, work your way into what's important, And three of these guys stood this last night, and they were masterful at it. And did he confess?

I would just say that we have sufficient evidence to proceed on the charges and his statements were consistent with that evidence. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and Water.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Even in that press conference, you can hear just how emotional some of the officers who worked Holly's case were over the case being solved after almost a decade. They also mentioned how impressed they were with Parabon's work.

In investigating, and arresting Michael Henslick, police obtained search warrants for both his current residents and the one that he lived in at the time of Holly's murder in Candlewood Estates. Henslick was under the nose of police for quite some time. As we mentioned, he had been arrested for other crimes before, but he wouldn't show up to his probation hearings, so DNA was never collected. Had it been, it likely would have been entered into the law enforcement databases, and a match would probably have been developed eventually. Police are still trying to determine if Henslick specifically targeted Holly Casano.

They did attend the same high school and had mutual friends, but it's just to be determined if there's any connection beyond that. The state of Illinois does not have the death penalty, so Henslick faces life without parole if he's convicted. Seeing a case like Holly saw really shows just why genetic genealogy is such a great thing. Holly was a young mother with her entire life ahead of her, and her daughter, Alexis, was also robbed of having a life with her mom. Cases like Holly is being solved are the reason why I personally embraced and champion this technology being used.

Yeah, I think you're right more. If it's hard not to support cases like this being solved using these techniques that we've been talking about. And I think that's reinforced when you look at the child killers, take a off the street in 2018 using this technology. We talked about 8-year-old April Marie Tensley's case being solved after 30 years, but another brutal child killer was also identified in 2018 using genetic genealogy, and that's the killer of 12-year-old Michelle Welch. On Wednesday, March 26, 1986, 12-year-old Michelle brought her two younger sisters, Angie and Nick. And

to Puget Park in Tacoma, Washington. Michelle, along with one of her sisters, rode their bikes to the park, while her other sister roller skated to the park, and they arrived there around 10 a.m. By 11 a.m., the girls were getting hungry, so Michelle told her sisters to stay in the same spot and that she would ride home and make them all lunch. As she left, she ran into a classmate who she talked to for a minute. while Michelle was gone, Angie and Nikki had to go to the bathroom. And they walked to a nearby business just outside of the park to use their restroom.

And I think we need to clarify more for listeners. This was a park that had swings, picnic tables, but it also led down to wooded areas that, I guess you would call nature trails. So we're not talking about a small playground in the middle. of a city, right, surrounded by houses. There was a lot of wooded areas near this playground. When Michelle had returned to the park and didn't see her sisters around, she sat the food down on a picnic table and chained her bike alongside her sister's bike. She then headed off to look for them. By 115, Angie and Nikki had returned to the spot where they were supposed to wait for Michelle.

They found the food, and they also found Michelle's bike. They played for a while. while expecting Michelle to return, but got concerned when she didn't show back up. By 2 p.m., they left the park to go get help. Police arrived at the park just after 3 p.m. in order to search for the missing 12-year-old. They looked for any clues that might explain what happened to her. That night, they brought in search dogs, who at about 11.30 p.m., were able to track Michelle Ascent down to a gulch,

and to Michelle's lifeless body. An autopsy later revealed that she had been sexually assaulted. The cause of death has been reported as both a cut to the neck and blunt forced trauma to the head. Police urged local residents who may have been at the park that day to come forward. They were especially interested in knowing if anyone had seen anything or anyone that stood out. A 13-year-old classmate of Michelle's came forward to tell police that he had seen a man under the Proctor Bridge that day watching Michelle and her sisters. The witness described the man as being white, 24 to 26 years old, and about 5 foot 9. Police were interested in talking to this individual, but he never came forward.

Another witness who came forward worked at Michelle's school and recognized Michelle when they drove by the park at about 1.30 p.m. The witness stated that Michelle was talking to a man and pointing to the gulch where her body would later be found. Police also wanted to question this man, but he too never came forward. The unknown man was described as being white or possibly Hispanic, about 25 to 35 years old, and about 5'8 foot 8 with a mustache. Police tried to find both of these men, but they were unsuccessful. A 16-year-old girl reported that shortly after Welch's death, a white man jumped out from Bob's. behind the Proctor Bridge, grabbed her arm, and tried to pull her off the sidewalk. She managed to pull away, cross the street, and meet up with friends.

The man followed her the whole way, but fled when her friends chased him off. This man was described as white or Hispanic in his late 20s or early 30s, 5'7, with a small build and black wavy collar-length hair. Shortly after Michelle's murder, police released composite sketches of three suspicious men that were seen near the park. Michelle's family and the entire Tacoma area were shocked and saddened over the brutal murder of this young girl who loved to read and play both the piano and the violin. And like we talked about in the April Marie Tensley case, a child murder puts the whole

community on high alert. And that's exactly what happened in Tacoma. People kept a close eye on their children because they thought there was a monster out there targeting children. Five months later, another shocking child murder in a Tacoma Park would send investigators scrambling to find answers. On August 4, 1986, 13-year-old Jennifer Bastion planned to go to Defiance Park to do some bike riding on a popular bike route known as 5-mile drive.

This was a small single-lane road that snaked its way through the 700-acre park. A friend planned to go with Jennifer that day, but changed their mind at the last. last minute. Jennifer was training for an upcoming bike tour and still wanted to go. She called her dad to let him know that her friend had backed out of going with her, but that she still wanted to go. Her father wasn't thrilled with the idea of Jennifer heading out alone, but told her okay. Jennifer left her home at about 2.30 p.m. and should have arrived at the park by 3 p.m. By 6.30 p.m., Jennifer had not returned home, and her family began looking for her. After two hours of looking for their daughter without success, they called police at 8.30 p.m. Police converged on the park but could find no signs of the teenager.

Early the next morning before 6 a.m., dogs brought in by police had wrapped up a search of the park, but they were not able to lead police to Jennifer or her bike. For the next two days, the park was closed to the public while an exhaustive search was carried out, but no sign of Jennifer was found anywhere in the park. Once again, police, found themselves calling on the public to come forward with any information. They wanted to hear from anyone who had been to Defiance Park the day Jennifer Bastion vanished. One tip came in from a woman who reported seeing a girl that matched Jennifer's description being forced into a black van near the park between 2 and 2.30 p.m.

But police were skeptical and they ruled it out after. other witnesses came forward. A group of boys that went to the same school as Jennifer reported that they had been riding their bikes on five-mile drive and had passed Jennifer at about 4.10 p.m. Two other witnesses reported seeing a girl that looked like Jennifer at the Dalco Passage viewpoint. Both of their sightings occurred between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.

These eyewitness accounts didn't lead to any sign of Jennifer. Days passed as her family waited for answers, and then weeks. 24 days after she went missing, Jennifer Bashan's body was discovered in a wooded area of the park. Her 10-speed bike was found not far from her body. The 13-year-old had been raped and strangled. The Tacoma community's worst fears were confirmed when Jennifer's body was found. They felt that there was a monster on the loose in Tacoma, killing young girls with bikes in local parks.

And police agreed with that assessment. There were quite a bit of similarities between these two victims and their murders, and the two parks were only nine miles from each other. The only difference was the way in which the girls were killed. Police didn't have anything solid to connect to two cases, but they did have physical evidence. They had rape kit evidence from both victims, which in 1986 didn't help authorities, but decades later it would. 1986 came and went without an arrest in Michelle's or Jennifer's cases. Then the cases went cold. In 2016, Tacoma police reached out to Parabon,

who in turn created snapshots for both Michelle's and Jennifer's killers. And to the surprise of the police, the DNA profiles didn't match each other. Two different men had killed the young girls. And neither DNA profile matched anyone that was in law enforcement's DNA databases. And I've got to be honest, Morph, this one puzzled me a little. bit. The fact that it wasn't until 2016 that these two DNA profiles were found to not match each other. And we know DNA technology has been around for a number of years. It really just seems strange to me that they didn't figure this out sooner. Yeah, Mike, I agree. There was nothing

in the research that I could find that explained why it took so long until 2016. to make that determination. Now, in an odd twist, there would be one connection between the cases of Michelle Welch and Jennifer Bastion. Police had a man on their radar since 1986. After he provided a tip to them regarding Michelle's case, this man, Robert Washburn, called police in May of 1986 to report seeing a man resembling the description of Welch's killer jogging in Point Defiance Park. He told police that he'd seen the composite sketch of the suspect, and he recognized him as a fellow jogger.

At the time of the tip, Jennifer had not gone missing, but just three months later, she vanished from the very same spot that this man mentioned in his tip. And that put him on detective's radar. In 2016, police were following up crossing off names from their person of interest list, determining who they didn't have a DNA sample from.

And Richard Washburn was a person of interest for whom they did not have a DNA sample. They approached him and they asked him for a voluntary sample of his DNA and he gave it willingly. When they compared his DNA, they found it to be a match to the DNA of the DNA of, Jennifer Bastion's killer. Washburn was arrested in 2016 for the murder of Jennifer Bastion. That's a really strange scenario. He didn't kill Michellea, but shortly after her murder, he gave a tip about seeing someone who might have been a suspect on the five-mile drive. Then later on, he goes out and murders a girl on the five-mile drive and leaves his DNA behind. So in the end, the cases did have a connection, but there were just two separate

killers. This still left police with the unanswered question of who killed Michelle Welch. They wouldn't have to wait long for an answer. In 2018, Parabon took their work on Michelle's case even further and did the genetic genealogy on the DNA profile. And just like in the case of April Marie Tensley that we talked about this season, that genealogy led them to a set of two brothers. From there, police looked at both of them closely and zeroed in on one in particular. responsible for the crime has been identified. He is in custody. And the detectives are still working the investigation. That being said, please understand that we might not yet know the answer to some of your questions or might not be able to answer some questions as they may affect

the ongoing and active investigation. I would like to introduce Tacoma Police Chief Don Ramstale. Thank you all for being here and joining with us. this very important day. I think I'll start out with a message to those who do harm to the members and great citizens of Tacoma. If you think you can run, you're wrong. If you think you can hide, you're wrong. If you think that the Colon Police Department is going to give up, you're wrong. To the Colon Police Department will never give up. Our priority is public safety. Our priority is bringing justice to victims of crimes and their families. It is extraordinary that I would be standing here again just a little over a month after bringing you news of the

Jennifer Bastion case, another 32-year-old cold case that our department investigated and solved. So all thanks to the great work, diligence of the men and women of the Colon Police Department. These cases truly represent the crossroads of good old-fashioned police work combined with improvements in technology, advancements in DNA identification and computer modeling combined with tried and true policing techniques, continue to provide results. this case is a great example of that

on Wednesday June 20th 2018 in the city of Lakewood we arrested Gary Hartman as a suspect in the murder of Michelle Welch he was taken into custody during a traffic stop following several days of surveillance by our detectives the suspect was cooperative

and the arrest occurred without incident he is currently being held in a Pierce County Jail awaiting for arraignment search warrants have been executed at the Hartman's residence in Lakewood, as well as this place of employment, as this investigation continues and unfold. In the way of background of those of you who were living in Tacoma back in 1986, as I was, a rookie police officer at the time, you may recall that this horrific crime shook our community. The crime scene was processed for evidence, and unknown DNA was recovered at the time. A number of men were investigated for the crime based on witness statements relating to males being seen in the area. Gary Hartman was not one of those individuals.

For many years, it was suspected that the same person who killed Michelle Welch was also responsible for the murder of Jenny Bastion. The two incidents occurred just within several months apart of each other. In 2013, a DNA profile was obtained. in the case of Jennifer Bastian. It was determined then that the profiles were separate. And for the first time, investigators knew they were looking for two separate suspects. In 2016, the Colom Police Department worked with Parabon Nanolabs

on a DNA phenotype profile. That profile yielded a composite that described the characteristics of a possible suspect, which includes hair color, eye color, skin tone and body type. In May 2018, our cold case unit continued its work with Parabon Nanolabs, specifically their genetic genealogist in hopes of locating the possible suspect from the suspect DNA initially recovered at the crime scene of Michelle Welch.

Genetic genealogy uses a DNA technology to identify subjects by matching the unknown profile to a family member. Traditional genealogy is then used to build a family tree from publicly available websites. Through this process, two brothers were identified as possible suspects. Additionally, the age of the brothers made them capable of committing this crime, and they both lived in the North End of Tacoma in 1986. Armed with that information, we collected abandoned DNA from the two brothers. the DNA samples were then sent to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab.

On Tuesday, June 19th, the lab contacted us with a match between the original DNA and the sample collected from Gary Hartman. That led to his arrest on Wednesday the 20th of June and closed a chapter in this longstanding cold case. Over the course of the last 32 years, the Michelle Welch case, case has been investigated by numerous detectives from the Colon Police Department. I would like to thank each of them for their hard work and their diligence, their vigilance during these investigations. Good afternoon. I'm Mark Lindquist. I'm your county prosecutor. Jennifer Bastion and Michelle Welch were among the main reasons that we formed a cold case team

of the Coal Police Department in 2011. As Chief Ramsal noted, those cases stunned the city. 1986 and stayed with us. There have been advances in DNA technology and we have been staying on top of those advances. Today we're at a point where if you're a criminal and you've left your DNA at the scene, you might as well turn yourself in now. We will catch you. We have charged Mr. Hartman with murdering the first degree and rape in the first degree. We'll be arraining him on those charges Monday. I'd just like to close by thanking the DeKone Police Department, the FBI, and the crime lab, and everybody else who worked these cases, including the people out in the community

who communicated with us. We appreciate the teamwork. We appreciate the collaboration, and we're happy to be delivering justice and some closure for the community. Thank you. We followed him into a restaurant where he was routinely going about his day. He had gone to the restaurant. He had gone to the restaurant with a co-worker, ordered some coffee and something to eat and sat down at a table. I ordered some coffee for myself and sat down at a table nearby where I could observe his actions. I observed him using the napkin multiple times. He crumpled it up, put it into a bag, then crumpled that bag up, and then voluntarily abandoned that bag. he left the restaurant and I was able to collect it and get that submitted to the lab.

It is exciting, but of course there's a lot of work to do even after that moment takes place. And there are a lot of detectives that were involved in doing that surveillance, a lot of detectives that were involved in affecting the arrest. So it is an exciting moment for us. But we also have to stay focused and continue with the job we need to do. I have spoke with Michelle's mom, Barbara Leonard. She is ecstatic. I was working at the time, so the chief had the honor of calling her and initially breaking the news to her.

She told me that that sent chills down her spine. and I've had multiple conversations with her since. She's very grateful and very excited. That was the Tacoma Press Conference detailing just how the arrest of Gary Charles Hartman came about. And I think one of the cool things about that press conference is that you got to hear from the actual detective that surveilled Hartman and was able to get his DNA. Michelle's mom Barbara recounted getting the news from police about the arrest of her daughter's killer, as well as what it was like to face him in court for the first time. Chief Bransdale said, are you sitting down?

So there was a chair right there. So I sat down and I said yes. He said, we have arrested the person or apprehended the person we feel is responsible for Michelle's murder. It was just like, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. You never expect the face of somebody. that's done something this terrible to look normal, you know, somebody that's maybe your neighbor, your friend. Finally, I feel I have a little bit of closure. Michelle's mom really hit the nail on the head when she said that Gary Charles Hartman

looked like a normal guy who might be a friend or a neighbor. In fact, he didn't have any criminal record. He was a married father and was a nurse at a local Washington hospital and still live close to the park where Michelle was killed. This is just further proof that when these killers are enmast, not all of them look like the troll under the bridge or fit the profile of someone who would commit these kinds of crimes. Hartman could have faced a death penalty if found guilty of the rape and murder of Michelle Welch.

But just weeks ago, in October, 2018, the state of Washington abolished the death penalty. But even so, prosecutors will certainly see. life imprisonment without parole for the alleged child killer. So we will have to see how this one plays out in the courts. And more if I know this is one that you and I will be keeping a close eye on. I'm very interested to see how the prosecution of Gary Charles Hartman goes down. It'll be interesting to see if Hartman takes a plea deal or goes to trial. All right.

That wraps up episode. 7, in episode 8 will wrap up season 4 with more cases solved in 2018, including that of Christy Mirac, a 25-year-old teacher who was murdered in Lancaster County, PA in 1992. So make sure to join us for the finale of season 4. If you like to show, please take a minute. If you haven't already, go out, give us a five-star review. that goes a long way towards helping other people find the podcast. And if you'd like to interact with us on social media,

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Well, so do I. If you want a weekly True Crime podcast that says what you're thinking, then grab a beer and pull up a deck chair. This is Cambo from True Crime Island, another True Crime podcast, and maintain the rage with me. Visit True Crime Island.com, where you can download or stream each episode. Plus, there's links to iTunes and social media. And as I always say, don't forget to delete your browser history.

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