True Crime with Kendall Rae - SOLVED 27 Years Later: Christy Mirack

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

In 1992, Christy Mirack was a 25-year-old elementary school teacher, who strangely didn’t show up to work one day. She was later found dead in her home, after having suffered an assault and a sexual assault. The case would go on for years without a clear answer as to who had done it, but thanks to the rapid evolution of technology, her case was finally solved. Donate to NCMEC through my campaign!  https://give.missingkids.org/campaign/kendall-rae/c438796 Shop my charity merch! https://milehighermerch.com/  All profits from this charity merch will be donated to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: https://www.missingkids.org/  This episode is sponsored by: HelloFresh - promo code: kendallrae50 Storyworth Check out Kendall's other podcasts: The Sesh & Mile Higher Follow Kendall! YouTube Twitter Instagram Facebook Mile Higher Zoo REQUESTS: General case suggestion form: https://bit.ly/32kwPly Form for people directly related/ close to the victim: https://bit.ly/3KqMZLj Discord: https://discord.com/invite/an4stY9BCN CONTACT: For Business Inquiries - [e-mail]

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One that I've followed for a really long time and one that recently got solved, which was amazing. And back when I first heard about it, it was not solved. This is another case that has been recently solved with genetic genealogy, which is such a fascinating thing if you have not heard about what they're doing in the crime world with genealogy these days and how they were literally solving crimes

years and years later with genealogy and DNA. It's amazing. Very interesting and I really hope it leads to more and more cases being solved because even though the death I'm about to tell you about is extremely tragic, there is a little bit of a silver lining with this video that it has now been finally solved and the family has answers. So this is Christy Mirak. Christy was born on November 3rd of 1967 and she grew up in Pennsylvania. She was the middle child in her family and her family and her were extremely close. Just by listening to the family's interviews,

you can tell how close they truly are and how this whole thing has just broken them in such a deep way. And she was especially close with her brother and his name is Vince. And Christy was a really well-liked person and so many of the cases that I cover, the person is a well-liked person,

but really, Christy was really loved and cherished by those around her. She was described as kind of like the wholesome girl next door type of person. She was just really, really nice, like salt of the earth type of individual and literally like no one had anything bad to say about her. There's actually this great clip of her when she was younger.

There was this show, this old show. It was called Dancing on Air. Let's go there, let's dance on it! And I think it was literally just a show of people dancing on air. And Chrissy wanted to be on this show really, really bad and she ended up getting onto the show. I can't wait to have a look.

We're gonna have a good time. Oh, no. She was just that type of person who enjoyed fun situations and was really outgoing. One thing that Christy always wanted was to be a teacher. And I really relate to Christy in so many ways because before I decided to become a full-time YouTuber really relate to Christy in so many ways because before I decided to become a full-time YouTuber and really like go for the moon with this job, I was in elementary

education. I went through three years of school in the elementary education major and I met tons of other elementary ed majors and I'm telling you there's some of the nicest people out there like elementary teachers or just teachers in general are some of the nicest humans you'll ever meet. So Christy's story is especially sad in that sense because she was this amazing teacher and you know, not just any teacher. She really, her kids truly, truly liked her. People said they would go into her classroom and she had this way of like captivating her student. What would you look at Emily? Let's go with what we have up here. And the principal said that she was one of his best teachers.

There are certain teachers where you can walk in their classroom. And you almost get chills. She was extremely into her job and dedicated to her students. Like we've all had that one good teacher that you'll just remember forever. Like I'm sure you can think of someone. And Christy Marack was that person for a lot of kids. So in 1992 she was 25 years old and she was living in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She loved the school that she was working in as a teacher and was truly enjoying her life. The

community that she lived in was a really like tight-knit, strong community, the school, everyone in this area. And life was going really well for her. Her future was looking bright, she was happy, and then everything would change in December of 1992. It was actually only five days before Christmas on the 20th, and she was at home doing the sweetest thing ever. She would individually wrap books for each of her students so that they would each have their own personal gift from her.

Now that is going above and beyond. She wanted to give them all like a Christmas present and that's what she decided to do. So the next day it was the 21st, it was wrapping up the semester and Christy started her day off like normal just getting ready in her house like normal. She had all those gifts wrapped up ready to bring to school with her and Christy was known for being like a super early riser. Like she was always up before the sun came up. On this particular day, Chrissy decided to watch some TV before getting ready for work. She had a roommate and it was actually Monday morning, so her roommate left for work at around 7 a.m. and Chrissy usually left around 7.45. However, Chrissy did not make it to

work that day. And this is like extremely unlike her because she is super into her job. She loves being a teacher, she loves her students, and she would never just not show up and not call. Like if something was wrong, she would call and make sure there's a substitute or something, she wouldn't just ditch her students. Her school principal was literally shocked by this.

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have you heard from Christie? The phone rang. My mom was upstairs. She, she can now, she said, Christie didn't show up for a work. And so her principal was so worried he jumped right in his car and was like, She, she can now sit, she said, Chrissy didn't show up for work. And so her principal was so worried he jumped right in his car and went to Chrissy's apartment.

She was worried I was worried. And I said, I'll tell you what, I'll drive down and I'll probably end up changing her tire on the car. So I started driving. Her mother had given me her address. Farther I went. I did not see her. And then I started to panic.

I pulled up to her car was parked there, and I knew something was wrong. So he went up to her individual unit, and the door was cracked open, which is obviously pretty weird and scary. So he started yelling in there, yelling her name. So I'm yelling, Christie. Christie, Christie. And didn't hear back, didn't hear anyone. So I'm yelling, Christy, Christy, Christy.

And didn't hear back, didn't hear anyone, so he decided to go further in and he eventually saw Christy and her ex body lying lifeless on the floor. Meanwhile, Christy's family is very concerned, knows some things probably wrong and are waiting to hear back from the principal. I kept calling and calling and calling and finally when somebody answered her phone at her apartment, they acknowledged themselves as being someone from law enforcement and that just made an accident and she passed. What was your reaction when you heard that?

That was just a joke. And it's terrible, but Christie's body was in horrible conditions, so much so that the family were told that they probably shouldn't view her. She was sexually assaulted. she was strangled. They think that was the cause of death. Her head was beating, her jaw was like punched in, and she was still wearing her coat and her gloves.

So it was obvious that she was headed out to work when this happened. This is really strange, but investigators actually found a footprint on top of her doorway. So they think that at one point she may have been lifted up really high. There were also scuff marks found in the living room for her area. And in the room, there was actually a cutting board found, no knife, but just a cutting board and investigators thought that was weird at first.

But then they realized maybe Kristi used it to defend herself and then the killer ended up using it back against her. And the books that she had wrapped up all for her students were scattered all across the floor for a moment. Now, seriously, no one had any idea who could have done this. Like, sometimes or oftentimes when women are found dead in their apartment, there's normally someone that you can suspect may have done it. But in this case, Christie didn't have like an abusive boyfriend or a toxic relationship. No one really knows who would want to hurt her. So she was buried at the All Saints Cemetery

in Ellisburg, Pennsylvania. And then what's really strange is the next day after this, someone showed about this school with flowers for Christie. When he was asked what he was doing, he said that he was just there because he was a friend of Christie's and he was just stopping by to say hello, which people thought was completely bizarre because she died. Like, it was big news in this area that she had died. And when the close friend of her, like, know what happened to her, very strange. So people started to think that this guy could have been the one who did it because sometimes criminals will

return to a crime scene or show up at a memorial. Like, there's all types of weird cases of stuff like that happening. So the school staff did end up calling the police because they thought it was so strange. And the next day, the same guy calls back to the school and asked if there were counseling services available for, you know, people who lost Christie. The principal ended up getting really worried and just told him

no and you are not welcome at the school. So this man ended up being Christie's secret boyfriend who was actually 20 years older than her and married. And people started to think that maybe it really could have been him because why would she open the door to a stranger? Like she obviously knew whoever she would let into her house. But the thing was, is there was a bunch of DNA left at this crime scene like a lot. And when they ran the DNA through the National Enforcement Database, nothing came back no match. It wasn't long before Christie's boyfriend, secret boyfriend, was cleared as being a suspect. They interviewed a ton of people, like a lot of people,

because they thought it could have been someone who had a really low key role in her life, maybe someone who's just like an observer, kind of a stalker from the sidelines. Even though investigators talk to so many different people, not one of them ended up becoming a viable suspect. Like they had no possible good leads, and they were left with pretty much nothing.

For weeks, which turned into months, which turned into years, and Christie's family, obviously had to deal with the pain. I'm not feeling that I have to have her for a very long time. Just before the 10 year anniversary of Christie's death, her mom did pass away from cancer, which was very sad, although she did feel comforted,

knowing that she was gonna be with Christie soon. News really hard for the rest of the family and her mom really made a big plea on the news stations. One last time, one last interview about Christie trying to get the public to reignite interest in this case and her mom ended up passing away in November of 2002. They want justice for their daughter and sister

to law enforcement. Her case is one that has gone on for 19 years too long. And to someone who never knew her, Kristi Murak is a name that is always stuck with him. 19 years of class and the East Lampeter Township Police Department continues to actively investigate any and all leads, none putting anyone behind bars. Most frustrating because it's been this long. you haven't been able to solve it.

That is not stopping police or Christie's family from having hope that one day this case will be closed. But until it is, Christie's family says they cannot forget. The pain is always there. I mean, there's not a day they could buy that, you know, we don't think about her. Christy's brother Vince was 21 at the time of her death. He says all his big sister ever wanted was to teach. He finally had trees, had to keep that dream, and I'm like, was taken away from her just like that. Christy's passion for teaching is what inspired Fred Nell to put the unsolved case in the public eye.

I kept driving by the school. I kept driving by the place you should live at. Thinking about her, I value education. I value that Christy could still be teaching today 19 years later. Now never met Christy or her family, but his signs and t-shirts are reminders that she should not be forgotten. And any information should be shared.

I just knew I can make a difference, and I know one person can make a difference on trying to solve this case. A sentiment reflected by each person who has been touched by Christy before or after her death. You can end this, and the family can get final closure to what happened to their daughter. We desperately wanted to solve this case.

We're very determined to do so, you know, for the family and for Christy. I don't even want to have to deal with 20 years here. Anniversary of Christie's dad. Rack was a teacher at the old Roor's town elementary school, and Nell says her absence here is sad. I believe someone out there is going to drive by that, eventually one day and say, you know what, I want to talk. This has been an emotional case for us as well.

It reminds us, you know, that we haven't solved this case yet. And it's very important. 19 years later, they're hoping one of them will flesh out and I hope find the killer. I remember where this happened. All right. So my parents have always told me this story about how they stayed at a paranormal house.

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Storyworth.com slash Kendall Ray. So two whole decades passed when a district attorney named Craig Steadman decided that he was going to get involved in the case and take over so that it could have a fresh set of eyes. Him and his team decided to start completely over from the ground up, like start at square one and see if there was anything that was missed. And obviously, eight, a lot of time has passed

since Christy was murdered in 1992. It's been over 20 years and genealogy has come a really, really long way. So the DA and his team decided to get in touch with a company called Parabond Nanolabs. And I've talked about this company before. As they were involved in the April Tinsley case, they are really paving the way with this DNA stuff.

It's amazing. They do something called DNA Fino Typing. They basically use a special technology to create a digital picture of what someone's supposed to look like from a DNA sample. They did this with the DNA at the crime scene and created a picture of what they think the suspect could have looked like and then it was sent out to the public. So this is this is the image that they've come up with and then down here you'll see the different characteristics and first the ancestry and then the skin, eye, hair and the freckles. I'll go through these for those

if you can't case you can't see it so they give you different percentages and the different shades The orange bar is where they're saying is is you know the most likely Appearance and then they give you the percentage of confidence that they have that as well That's right. They're very clear that DNA isn't giving that age or the body mass index. They are doing approximations. And those are the ages that they typically pick. But you're absolutely right.

DNA doesn't tell you how old somebody is. Now, there is someone that you should know about named CC Moore. And she is hugely involved in a lot of different cases and is literally solving cases using genetic genealogy. And she's like one of the best in the business. So for decades, the case of the Golden State Killer had investigators baffled and citizens on edge.

Then just in April, former police officer, Joseph D'Angelo, was arrested and is now awaiting trial on murder charges. The break in that case came through DNA and genetic genealogy. In our next guest, C.C. Moore is a DNA detective of sorts. You've got to hear her story. She's become one of the leaders in this field. She is known to do a lot of her legwork from her couch. And it is groundbreaking work that could have huge

implications for fighting crime. The should tell us which ones we can be more confident. There's no separation between those two populations. Never once occurred to me that I would end up being involved in law enforcement in any way and certainly not in helping to solve crimes. More partners with a company called Parabahn Nenolabs, which analyzes DNA samples, left at crime scenes,

and then uploads their results to JetMatch, a public genealogy website, where people have already provided their own results from DNA tests. She decided to step in and try to solve this case, and the tests came back with several hits of family members of the killer. CC was then able to narrow down the family tree to a specific family in Lancaster of European

and Latin American descent. Even though she found the family that he was in though she still had to find the exact person. So this is crazy but she ended up looking at archived newspaper articles and documents and stuff and she found an engagement announcement for the son of the targeted family. And just like that, she was able to narrow it down and figure out exactly who this person was. So she literally solved this case, and she figured out who killed Kristi Murak, and it only took her a few days

after over 20 years of investigators trying to figure it out. So the next step in this is if you don't have the actual suspects DNA, you only have their family and you're tracing it back through the tree, you have to actually get their DNA to confirm that they matched the DNA. So they had an idea of who they thought this was and they basically waited for the suspect outside of this school and he came outside and he tossed a water bottle and some gum into trash can and they took it out and that's

how they figured it out. Now they have done this many times they literally go through criminals trash. That's how they called the Golden State Killer. And on June 25th of 2018 it was announced at press conference that they finally had a match to the DNA that they were holding on for the past 25 years in the Christy Marquees. Thank you, Brad. Good afternoon. Thanks for coming. Again, apologies for holding you up a little bit of this affluent situation. And we just wanted to have things organized before we came in and spoke to you. So, as you said, I'm Craig Stedman, I'm the district attorney, Lancaster County. There could be a lot more people standing up here.

So many people have worked on this case. But today, we are announcing the arrest of Raymond Charles Rowe for the murder of Christie Murak from December 21st 1992. He is being charged with one county criminal homicide by Detective Christopher Herb from my office, a likes county detective from the DA's office. He was arrested today at his home and will be taken to likesaster County prison, he will not be eligible for bail in this offense, for this offense. I will go through some of the facts of the case. I'm gonna allow Steve Armertraub as the CEO of Parabond,

labs to talk a little bit about his critical role in this case and making, getting us here to this point as well as CC more which will be coming in through Skype. Genealogy is a relatively new technique. It was thrust into the public spotlight after the Golden State Killer suspect arrest. We used a database called Jedmatch.

Jedmatch is a publicly available database. I have a personal message Jedmatch. That match is a publicly available database. I have a personal message for Christie's family. He'll get inspired by your dedication throughout my work on this day. I hope he will send Christie's mother to be here with us today. This is Christie Murax Killer. His name is Raymond Rowe.

He's 49 years old, and he's actually a popular wedding DJ. Apparently, he's so good that people book him like months in advance and he's like the best DJ in this whole area and no one had any idea that he could do something like this. Like people were shocked and it's crazy when you look at the pictures that Paraben produced like the you know computer generated pictures compared to his actual photos. You can tell that it's, it works extremely well. I mean, it's very similar, especially like the nose, the bone structure. And if you think about it, that DNA was from 20 years ago.

So it would have been him at a much younger age. And in addition to being a DJ, he was also a successful businessman and a father. He was someone who'd often attend church. And for 25 years, he was living a pretty good life as a free man after he killed Christine. And what's also really strange is he was actually known as someone who was very against violence,

which is kind of awkward. In fact, in 1992, he literally made an event called Stop the Violence. And the event was to get kids to move away from violence. And it turns out that this was actually a few months before he committed the murder. Raymond Rowe is being held in prison without bail. He is set to appear in court next week to face the charges against him. And, you know, the police didn't have any records on him or anything.

They didn't see any red flags about him. But one of his ex-girlfriends did say she was surprised, but she wasn't shocked completely because he was pretty aggressive with her and controlling of her in the bad relationship. But the big mystery here is did Christy actually know this guy? Because her family thinks she would never have opened the door for someone she didn't know. Either she was opening the door and he just barged in, but why target her? Or did she know him where they may be dating secretly if she had this other secret boyfriend I mean he was a DJ and she was young she'd go out with her friends so maybe it was possible they ran into each other one night

But it doesn't explain why he would just violently kill her like that It seemed like a rage crime like a crime of passion So it makes me wonder if there was a secret relationship there But I'm not sure one thing that was really strange is they did find a ticket to a certain club that Raymond did DJ at during the time that she was killed. So it is possible they crossed paths. So Raymond Rowe ended up pleading guilty on Tuesday, January 8th, 2019. Susan Ligas County District of Rancor, Craig Stem and joining me just wrapped up a press conference

on the Raymond Rowe AKA DJ Freeze, guilty plea in Christie Murocks murder back in 1992. Thank you for joining us. You said this is a case that deserves the death penalty, but you were willing to accept the guilty plea today. Explain that. Well, on the facts, I mean, it's just so brutal. The law, the death penalty is justified. And having said that, we know in Pennsylvania, they're not really executing people for it, and it's what's more important is what's the family feel.

And we sat down with the family, and the family was very much in favor with this disposition to spare them a trial, and he'll never get out. Life in prison. Without the possibility of pro, plus 60 years. You do believe he may have been stalking her from a distance.

There were incidents leading up to this of someone with a peeping Tom at the residence. We also have we could show that he worked on the same road that was just down the road from her apartment and it would have been along

his route from the city. We would have driven by that hundreds of time right by her apartment, which is on the corner. So we have some links in addition to that that they were frequenting the same social clubs. He actually would DJs, but we can't, we don't have anything that says they met on a certain day.

And apparently when they were in court, he actually said something to her family and said, I can't imagine what you're going through. I apologize. He also said, I'm sorry sir to Christie's father. So even though this is an incredibly sad case, like I said, it is amazing that these cases are being solved and it's really great to hear of cases

that end up getting solved with this genetic testing because two reasons. One, we could still solve all of these past cases that are unsolved. There are so many, it's insane and there's plenty of DNA that we can start working on. They're doing tons of stuff right now as we speak and killers will be caught in the future.

The other reason is that maybe this can prevent other killers from even wanting to commit a crime. Like, if you're gonna commit some violent crime, you're gonna probably leave Danae evidence behind. It's almost impossible. And with how good everything is now, good luck getting away with it. My heart truly goes out to Christi Murak's family.

This is such a sad story. Christy seemed like such a wonderful, wonderful human, someone who did not deserve to be brutally murdered on their way to school. I mean, it's such a senseless tragedy that just leaves me like without words. It's so messed up. I'm very, very glad though she has justice now. Very late, but better late than never, that's for sure. has justice now. Very late, but better late than never, that's for sure. That is going to be it for me today, guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode. And make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple podcasts. It really does help me out.

If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then, stay safe out there. From joyful occasions to the unexpected, first Franklin financial makes loans for living, offering fixed rates and flexible terms on loans up to $15,000. The next time you're looking for some extra cash to help make ends meet, come see the Friendly Franklin folks, or visit us at 1ffc.com to learn more. All loan terms in APRs depend on meeting our underwriting and income criteria and may require

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