Sins & Survivors: A Las Vegas True Crime Podcast - Unraveling the Past - Linda Sue Anderson and Theresa Romano

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Two women, two decades-old mysteries, and one powerful tool—DNA. In this episode, we examine how forensic genealogy helped identify Linda Sue Anderson, once an unknown homicide victim, and how new DNA testing finally led to an arrest in the brutal 2003 murder of Theresa Romano. How did investigators connect the dots after so many years? And will justice be served?DNA has become an important investigative tool, not only when analyzing current cases, but for solving cold cases from decades ago. With this rapidly evolving technology, smaller and smaller amounts of DNA can be used to identify unknown victims and unknown murderers using genetic genealogy and other investigative techniques. Because of this, there is new hope for people who have lost loved ones that they might achieve some level of closure.We’ve got two of these cases for you today, one from 1991 and one from 2003. As with so many of the stories we cover, we don’t know a lot about the victims, because the media prefers to focus on the more sensational aspects rather than the victims and those they leave behind. In one case we have the typical story of a woman who allegedly just up and left her family, and in the other, we have a brutal murder that remained unsolved for 21 yearshttps://sinspod.co/70sourcesDomestic Violence Resourceshttp://sinspod.co/resourcesClick here to become a member of our Patreon!https://sinspod.co/patreonVisit and join our Patreon now and access our ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content & schwag! Get ad-free access for only $1 a month or ad-free and bonus episodes for $3 a monthApple Podcast Subscriptionshttps://sinspod.co/appleWe're now offering premium membership benefits on Apple Podcast Subscriptions! On your mobile deviceLet us know what you think about the episodehttps://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/2248640/open_sms Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sins-survivors-a-las-vegas-true-crime-podcast--6173686/support.

To listen ad-free, visit Zinspod.co slash subscribe. Starting at $2.99 a month, you'll also get access to our exclusive bonus content episodes when you join through Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Thanks for supporting the show! DNA has become an important investigative tool, not only when analyzing current cases, but for solving cold cases from decades ago. With this rapidly evolving technology, smaller and smaller amounts of DNA can be used to identify unknown victims and unknown murderers using

genetic genealogy and other investigative techniques. Because of this, there's new hope for people who have lost loved ones that they might achieve some level of closure. We've got two of those cases for you today, one from 1991 and one from 2003. As with so many of the stories we cover, we don't know a lot about the victims because the media prefers to focus on the more sensational aspects rather than the victims and those they leave behind. In one case, we have the typical story of a woman who allegedly just up and left her family, and in the other, we have a brutal murder that remained unsolved for 21 years. Hi, and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast,

where we focus on cases that deal with domestic violence, as well as missing persons and unsolved cases. I'm your host, Sean. And I'm your co-host, John. As we said, we have two cases today, one from the early 1990s and the other from 2003. What they have in common is that we have two female victims and that eventually both would be solved using DNA evidence. As usual, there are some frustrating aspects to these cases. The news media didn't cover much about the victims themselves, and the initial investigations were seriously hampered by the technology of the time. We've talked about CODIS in previous episodes, but as a reminder, CODIS is the Combined DNA Indexing System, a national DNA database maintained by the FBI, which helps law enforcement agencies

identify and link criminal offenders through DNA profiles. It was established as a pilot project at the FBI in 1990 and became fully operational in 1998 after the passage of DNA Identification Act of 1994, which authorized the FBI to create and maintain a national DNA database. The amazing thing about CODIS is that it contains DNA profiles from convicted offenders, arrestees, depending on the state laws, forensic crime scene evidence, and importantly, unidentified remains. The other important tool to complete the equation here is the use of forensic genetic genealogy, which uses public and consumer databases to help identify unknown suspects or human remains through familial

relationships, or even directly sometimes. If there's no known match in CODIS, genetic genealogy can identify genetic relatives of a suspect or a victim and allows investigators to build a family tree to help identify them. Othram Labs in Texas does amazing work in this area and locally the Vegas Justice League works to fund their research and solve cold cases here in Las Vegas and elsewhere. Because of these two organizations, offenders and victims alike have been identified, which can offer justice or at least some degree of closure to families who have been searching for answers. That's a bit of a tangent, but it directly relates to both of our cases today. Do you want to start us out with our first case?

Sure. In 1993, Las Vegas was a lot smaller than it is today. If you visit the corner of Tropicana and Durango now, you'll be near Spanish Trails Country Club, which contains Spanish Trails, a very expensive gated community, and it's actually one of the most expensive here in Las Vegas. If you visited that area in 1993, though, you would have been in the desert. There were some streets that existed slightly further west than Durango, but not at Tropicana. That was all desert. On April 18, 1993, two biologists were in the area searching for tortoises for some research they were doing. As they searched, they smelled something that they described as the smell of decomposition.

They searched for the source and located what looked like a homemade quilt covered in rocks, but they quickly realized that they had stumbled on a shallow grave containing what was determined to be the skeletal remains of a female. Las Vegas Metro Homicide responded, and her remains were recovered. The Clark County coroner determined that she had died from gunshot wounds, estimating that it happened somewhere between mid and late 1991, and ruled her death a homicide. With no evidence to go on, the homicide investigation quickly became a cold case, and she was given the name Jane Tropicana Doe, a name that she would keep for over 30 years.

Note that we recently talked about Sahara Sue Sudo, who was found near Sahara and Las Vegas Boulevard about 14 years earlier in 1979, the last time we covered this topic. When NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, came online in 2005, her information was entered there as well. In early 2023, Metro reached out to Othram Labs in Texas, again hoping that their advanced methods of testing could finally give Jane Tropicana Doe back her name. The cost to do the analysis for a cold case like this is around $7,500, and for this one, that funding was provided by NamUs, which is funded by the National Institute of Justice via the Research Triangle Institute International. You can actually contribute straight to the funds for individual cases on their website, DNAsolves.com. When the cases are fully funded, Othram performs the DNA

analysis and research. You can see why people in law enforcement and true crime are so excited by all of this, because it starts to feel like cold cases are now much more solvable and closure is within reach. But let's get back to the case of Jane Tropicana Doe. The research Othram did finally allowed them to identify the victim through her brother. Her name was Linda Sue Anderson, but she also went by Linda Sue Andrews, and she lived here in Henderson, Nevada. Strangely, Linda was never reported missing back in 1991, and the story surrounding her disappearance is pretty suspicious, though no one has been arrested for her murder. Back in 1991, Linda Sue Anderson lived with two of her children, a daughter and a son, and her husband, who was a stepfather to them. Her oldest daughter, Michael Colishan, lived with her father in northern Nevada in Reno. Their stepfather told

them that one night their mother just up and left to start a new life and didn't want anyone looking for her and told them that she was living a double life and having an affair. He told the children that she left a note saying all of this, but Michael at least said that she never saw the note, and that's the part that's very suspicious to us. It turns out that according to her family, Linda Sue was experiencing a mental health condition, and because of this, they said that the idea that she just walked out seemed totally plausible to them, although it hurt them deeply that their mother possibly did just walk out of their lives. They all believed his story. Later, she told investigators that she spent her life hoping

that her mother would finally reach out to her, but she did not expect to be contacted by Metro. Their stepfather filed for divorce from Linda in 1992, and in the divorce documentation, he stated he'd last seen her in October of 1991. Michael also commented, though, that everyone in their lives was really shocked and said she'd never just leave her children like that. After 30 years, the children finally know that their mother didn't just walk out on them, but there's still work to do. Michael was interviewed after her mom was identified, and she said,

This whole time we were thinking she left us, that she didn't love us. This is huge. It's a huge thing in our lives. She said that when the news came down, all of the siblings immediately all called each other on the phone, and I can't even imagine the mixed bag of feelings they were having about this. She didn't leave them, but she had been murdered and had died from gunshot wounds. As Michael said, to know she was murdered, we all wonder if she suffered, what she was thinking, who did this to her. We want answers. The case remains open as a homicide investigation, and if we learn more, we will definitely share it. We have some thoughts on this that probably occurred to you as well, but we'll talk about that in our Swing Shift episode right after this,

so subscribe now to listen to that at sinspod.co slash subscribe and let us know what you think about this one. Anyone with information about Linda Sue Anderson is urged to contact the Homicide Section of Metro Police by phone at 702-828-3521 or by email at homicide at lvmpD.com. And to remain anonymous, of course, you can contact Crime Stoppers by phone at 782-385-5555 or on the internet at crimestoppersofenvy.com. Her children deserve answers on who murdered their mom, whether that person is still alive and can be brought to justice, or if he died years ago. The second case we have has some similarities, but a whole other set of frustrating aspects. On September 4th, 2003, the Henderson police were called by a person who went to visit his friend, 28-year-old Teresa Romano, who he found non-responsive in her home in the 200 block of Gold Street near Water Street in East Lake Mead, right near downtown Henderson. She'd rented

the home about a month earlier and lived there with her two children and two other roommates. The police responded, and according to a police report, the home was described as being in complete disarray and very dirty. They found Teresa lying face down in the bedroom, covered by a comforter, but had obviously been in a violent struggle because she was covered with multiple contusions and the area near her head was bloody. When they removed the comforter, they saw that she had multiple stab wounds in her neck and when they moved her, they found a pair of scissors under her. The coroner determined that she had died

from multiple sharp force trauma and detectives believe it was these scissors that were the murder weapon. Her death was ruled a homicide, of course, and the investigation started. Witnesses said that they heard a truck racing away from the scene, but initially, no one had any good leads for the police. About two weeks after the murder, they were able to identify a suspect in a way that probably isn't the way you expect. On September 13, 2003, Henderson police arrested Sherry Wright for something completely unrelated, but when they were questioning her, she told them she had information about the murder of Teresa Romano. She told them

that she was friends with a man named Ricky Lee Trader, who frequently visited her to get food and drugs. She said that a couple of nights before she was arrested, Trader had come over to her house, spinning out. She said he told her that he was in an incident with a woman and said things like, there was blood everywhere and she wouldn't shut up, she wouldn't shut up and I had to cut her and I've got to get her off my mind, I've made a mess and I don't know what I'm going to do. She immediately obviously suspected this had to do with the nearby murder of Teresa Romano, so all of this freaked her out pretty badly. She said no when he asked her for drugs and asked him to leave and he started choking her. And thankfully he stopped before seriously hurting her and then

ended up just leaving. Based on this, the police again analyzed the evidence in Teresa's house, including a massager, a lamp, multiple cans of soda, and the blades of two figure skates that were recovered. When they did, they got a fingerprint match for Trader. The strange part is that they didn't think that this was enough information to bring him in for the crime, so the investigation continued as they searched for other leads and more evidence. This is where the story becomes even more tragic, complicated, and infuriating. September 10, 2003, just a couple days after Trader came by Sherry Wright's place spinning out and ranting about the woman he claims he cut, a man named Robert Witwer was murdered in the same area of Henderson.

He was found stabbed to death in his bedroom with a kitchen knife around 4.30 a.m. A woman named Anna Mead called the Henderson police and told them that Witwer had been stabbed, and she even told them who had done it. Can you guess who she said killed Robert Witwer? If you guessed Ricky Lee Trader, you'd be exactly right. Henderson police ended up apprehending him around 8 a.m. as he lurked around the back of an apartment complex on Atlantic Street, along with a man named Paul Caballero, who had given Trader a ride. The police questioned Caballero, and he told them that Trader told him he needed someplace to hide. When they interviewed Trader and asked him what had happened, he seemed confused and incoherent,

and said that he didn't know or didn't remember what had happened. The witness, Anna Mead, picked Trader out of a six-person lineup and told police exactly what happened and how she'd seen Trader stabbing Witwer. She said she helped Witwer to the couch, and then she ran to St. Rose Hospital on Lake Mead and called 911. Trader was arraigned for first-degree murder in January of 2004 after a series of delays. Trader pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on September 19, 2006. He was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole and was given credit for time served, and he was shipped off to Ely State Prison in northern Nevada. Henderson detectives were still working on the case of Teresa's murder, and in 2010, they came back to Trader as a suspect and traveled up to Ely to meet with him. It's unclear, based on

the record, why this conversation didn't happen earlier, but Trader did admit to having a casual sexual relationship with Teresa, but didn't know anything about her murder. He told them that detectives took a DNA sample from him in 2003 on the night of Teresa's murder, but he had never heard anything after that from them. He also told them that Sherry Wright was a liar and was making up stories to get him in trouble. Somehow, although the investigation continued for several more years, no further evidence was found to positively identify Trader as a suspect. So eventually the case was turned over to the cold case unit of Henderson Police, and a note that Henderson Police Department is a fully separate entity from Las Vegas Metro,

just like North Las Vegas Police is. They are different cities with different police departments. That isn't to say that the departments don't work together sometimes, and this case is an amazing example of interdepartmental cooperation, with all of them working toward solving the case. They should always work together this seamlessly. In October of 2021, Henderson PD's cold case unit reviewed the case. They submitted a request to have additional evidence tested that was never tested before, including, unbelievably, the scissors found under Teresa's body, which was the murder weapon, and a phone cord. The new DNA that was obtained was sent to the Las Vegas Metro Forensics Lab in January of 2024, and while it was there in the forensics lab, an analyst asked

to process some of the original evidence that was already tested. Henderson PD provided a sample from Teresa's underwear and some nail clippings from her autopsy. Using updated methods, in May of 2024, from swabs in both of those last two items, the underwear and the nail clippings, they got a match for Ricky Lee Trader. Trader had been paroled in June of 2021 for his murder of Robert Whitwer after serving a total of about 18 years, and he was living in Reno. The Henderson police traveled up to Reno to speak to him in July of 2024. Trader was arrested on July 16, 2024, 21 years after the murder, during his parole check-in. When they interviewed him, he came up with some very lame excuses like, it was probably sweat, or maybe he had a soda at the house. This time, he denied having known Teresa entirely or having a sexual relationship with her,

despite the fact that he told police about it when they talked to him at Ely State Prison in 2010. The police were not convinced. Trader was extradited to Clark County and remanded to the Clark County Detention Center to await trial, where he currently faces charges for open murder. His case is set to resume at the end of February, which will be before this episode airs, and we'll provide updates as we learn about them. As we said, this was such a great collaboration between several departments across the whole state of Nevada, including Henderson Police Department's Cold Case Unit, Crime Scene Analyst Unit, Intelligence Unit, Northern Nevada Parole and Probation Office in Reno, and the Las Vegas Metro Police Department Forensic DNA Laboratory,

and we applaud this interdepartmental success. News Channel 8 got to speak with Teresa's daughter, Patricia, about the case and about her mom. She told the interviewer that her mom had been a talented ice skater and that when she was only two, her mom had taken her for skating lessons at Pickwick Ice Rink in Burbank, California. She said that five years later, long after her mom was gone, she went back to take lessons there again, and so many people remembered her mom there. She started skating again in her mom's memory as a way to be close to her, even though she wasn't around anymore. Since she was so young when she lost her mom, her Aunt Sherry, note this is a different Sherry than the one we talked about earlier who helped identify Trader as a suspect, her Aunt Sherry told her a lot of stories about her to

help fill in the details. Sherry told her a lot of stories about her to help fill in the details. Sherry told her that her mom had had her struggles but was turning her life around and always loved her daughters very much. Patricia also said that her mom's death was even harder on her older sister since she was old enough to understand what was going on, but she was happy they finally knew who did it and hoped that it could help in the healing process. She also told the news that she recently had a daughter, who she named for her mom, Teresa. She didn't say whether she'd be taking her daughter for figure skating lessons, but we sure hope so. It would be a great tribute. We'll provide updates as we get them about Ricky Lee Trader's trial

and on the search for answers on who murdered Linda Sue Anderson. If you're enjoying the podcast, one of the best ways to support us is to leave us positive reviews on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. You can also subscribe to get ad-free versions and access our Swing Shift bonus episodes. Thank you, as always, for listening, and we remind you that what happens here happens everywhere. Thanks for listening. Visit sinspod.co slash subscribe for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad-free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Threads at Sins and Survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at questions at sinsandsurvivors.com.

If you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence or needs support, please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website, sinsandsurvivors.com. Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, is research written and produced by your hosts, Sean and John. The information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording. If you have questions, concerns, or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found on our website, sinsandsurvivors.com. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of

the podcast creators, hosts, and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with legal professionals for guidance.