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Bloodline Detectives Season 6 Episode 8
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00:00Valentine's Day 1985 a young woman is found dead in her fiance's Arlington apartment
00:09she was very scared she had written letters to her mom sent her clippings of some of the news
00:16from murders that were happening in the area the apartment complex wasn't always occupied
00:22so not a lot of watchful eyes on what was going on suspect number ones are the partners and people
00:29closest to you rarely are there someone that is an unknown perpetrator in a case this seemed to be
00:36a very targeted personal attack somebody dying in that fashion even in 1985 just wasn't the norm
00:43community especially young woman was very on edge and very scared it goes cold again and then you
00:50think that it's just not gonna happen we just thought we're gonna be one of those families
00:55that doesn't ever get those answers the case goes cold for decades until a revolutionary DNA
01:03technology becomes available it was just a lot more challenging in 1985 because the tools that
01:09we have in 2025 were not available then digital forensics is evolving DNA technology is evolving
01:17and we need to be on the cutting edge of those technologies and to continue to move forward to
01:23try to provide answers for families I believe there's always something that can be found it may
01:29not be something that we realize at the time but we leave traces of ourselves wherever we go I believe
01:37investigative genetic genealogy is the present and future of solving these cold case when there's
01:43no tools left available if there's raw DNA present I believe any case can be solved criminals who have
01:51hidden in the shadows for years find there's no escaping science and their own family DNA welcome to
01:58bloodline detectives
02:21in 1985 Arlington Texas was a rapidly growing Dallas Fort Worth suburb known for its affordability family friendly neighborhoods and attractions like Arlington Stadium home to the Texas Rangers
02:40Arlington is great it is a very diverse set of individuals from all walks of life I think it's a very diverse city and I really think that that helps Arlington shine the way that it does Arlington is a very popular city we have approximately 400,000 residents
03:01spanned over 100,000 miles it's a very vibrant community Arlington's the 48th biggest city in the United States
03:13we're the home of the Dallas Cowboys the home of the Texas Rangers and it really makes for a community that it has a small town feel but it's really a big city
03:25in 1985 the population was less than 200,000
03:33there was an uptick in murders and violence against women at the time
03:42so there were a couple of serial killers that were around
03:48during 1985 especially in this area I think crime has always kind of been prevalent no matter where you go we just do our best to kind of kind of stamp that out
04:00because there was no DNA evidence because there was no camera systems because policing was much more challenging it was asking the public for help
04:10it was just a lot more challenging in 1985 because the tools that we have in 2025 were not available then
04:17the city is home to Terry McAdams a 22 year old woman who is studying at UT Arlington
04:26Terry McAdams was a sister and a friend she was a community member she was a student at the University of Texas at Arlington
04:35she was very high energy so she loved to do just about anything
04:42we were a family of five there were three daughters but it was such a magical time to be a child because the 1960s and 70s just everything was just so carefree
04:54the little rock was not very big and we just lived in a beautiful neighborhood and just had the time of our lives
05:00she started her college career at the University of Arkansas so she was there her freshman and sophomore years
05:07and just enjoyed the college life of a young lady for those two years but that's where she met her fiance and that's what brought her here to Arlington
05:16he was nice very soft-spoken I didn't really know him that well he gave her a really nice engagement ring and she was happy she was excited about it
05:26Terry moved here from Arkansas for her boyfriend who became her fiance she really wasn't sure still what she wanted to do for a degree she had dabbled in different areas but it seemed like her focus could be in finance it could be in marketing she had a lot of different interests she was a very creative person
05:47they lived in different apartments because Terry came from a conservative family and I don't think she had the intention of living with her fiance before they got married so she spent time in both apartments
06:04but in 1984 Terry grew increasingly fearful for her safety after a string of young women were murdered in the city
06:12she was very scared she had written letters to her mom sent her clippings of some of the news from murders that were happening in the area and she had left a job
06:25because she didn't like being out after dark she liked to come home and lock herself inside the apartment to feel safe
06:32it was an upscale apartment complex a lot of flight crew lived in that apartment complex which also meant that the apartment complex wasn't always occupied
06:41so not a lot of watchful eyes on what was going on on Valentine's Day 1985 Terry's worst fears become a reality a gruesome discovery is made by a maintenance worker who enters her fiance's apartment
06:59well they had come in to do some routine spraying for insects and when they walked into the apartment the television was on and the stove was on which seemed strange
07:10clearly someone had left in a hurry but when they went into the bedroom they discovered a terrible scene
07:16he unfortunately saw Terry McAdams lifeless body a very bloody and it was a horrific scene her face was beaten severely she had several broken bones looks like her like eye socket had significant trauma
07:34her body was found in a kind of a fetal position there was blood everywhere she was brutally sexually assaulted and she was unclothed so originally of course patrol comes out once they make the evaluation our homicide detectives responded they kind of take control from the scene there and resources that they need
07:56initially it would have been a patrol response and in this case we actually had what's called a courtesy officer that resided at that apartment complex it's a very tough scene i can only imagine what those officers felt when they walked into that scene and there was blood everywhere nothing appeared to be ransacked or anything the only thing that we could find that had been stolen from the apartment was Terry's engagement ring the apartment that she was in belonged to her fiance at the time we didn't know where it was
08:24so based on the fact that it was in his apartment it was in his apartment it was a very violent personal attack her fiance became suspect number one
08:31statistically a lot of times suspect number ones are the partners and people closest to you
08:43rarely are there someone that is an unknown perpetrator in a case
08:51police launch a homicide investigation and work quickly to locate the victim's fiancee
08:58news of the murder spreads quickly and residents of arlington are gripped by fear
09:04it did hit the community very hard it was in all the newspapers they even had flyers up in arkansas where she was from saying if you have any information please contact the arlington police department to try to find her killer
09:19people were very scared especially young women even terry herself was scared knew about the serial killers in the area community especially young women was very on edge and very scared
09:32women at the time were taking self-defense classes stun guns had come on the market they were snapping them up gun sales skyrocketed and a lot of the women particularly on the college campuses just had this annoying sense of fear that never went away
09:48women were talking about how afraid they were young women in arlington are locking their doors at night wary and on edge
09:55young women in arlington are locking their doors at night wary and on edge police understand the urgency and immediately focus on retracing terry's final movements and bringing her fiancee in for questioning
10:05on valentine's day 1985 22 year old uta student terry mcadams is found beaten to death in her fiancee's apartment in arlington texas police quickly launch a homicide investigation and appeal to neighbors for any information
10:32locating terry's fiancee is another vital line of inquiry
10:39the interesting part about terry being found in her boyfriend's apartment was terry also had an apartment in that same complex terry has her own apartment here why would she be at her boyfriend's apartment when he's not here
10:47we started talking to all the you know neighbors and friends and family and things of that nature and we kind of learned that terry and the fiancee did have a little bit of a tumultuous relationship to where they would get into fights and they would get into arguments
10:54it was a very just kind of back and forth type of relationship
11:07then terry's fiancee arrives back at his apartment and is met with a crime scene
11:13we took him to the police station and asked him to come in for an interview so we got his statement on where he was what he was doing and our next job was to verify his statement his statement was that he was out of town during this happening for work
11:40we were able to verify that later on with his employer but to be on the safe sign we also did a polygraph for him which he passed so we were able to rule him out fairly quickly
11:54they did extensive searches of his bank account of his travel records they verified where he was at the time and could not find anything to link him to what happened to terry
12:09i think it is important to rule out individuals that are innocent just as important as it is to find the suspect
12:19terry's fiancee is officially ruled out as a suspect investigators return their focus to the crime scene hopeful for clues left behind by the killer
12:30getting evidence in this crime was vital due to back then in 1985 you know you don't think about phones you don't think about video surveillance or anything like that
12:38so they did a lot of work in the scene you know they confiscated everything that they can get and that included you know samples of hair footprints bed sheets and cloths and clothes they gathered everything that they can get
12:53they got one solid fingerprint back and that was immediately put into an APHIS database system
12:59APHIS works it's pretty much a regional database system that all of our fingerprints get uploaded into
13:04it'd be able to tell if the suspect has already been in our custody or custody of law enforcement
13:09they didn't get a return from that APHIS database system
13:13we did a sexual assault kit to see if that would you know produce any results and we were able to get a hair sample from that sexual assault kit
13:22we did locate a cigarette butt that was in the apartment
13:27so the cigarette butt actually ended up being very significant as we continued our investigation
13:33the cigarette butt was left in the apartment but it was great that it was left because
13:39terry didn't smoke so that was very beneficial that that was left there
13:44we believed that the point of entry for the suspect was going to be a balcony door that was not secure
13:50and we were able to kind of further that belief based on a muddy footprint that we saw outside of the apartment as well
13:58ultimately we were able to send photos of that shoe to different manufacturers to try to determine what kind of shoe that it was
14:05and unfortunately i don't think we were ever able to get that figured out
14:08terry's body is removed from the scene and transported to the morgue for an autopsy
14:14an autopsy
14:17an autopsy report examines the body from head to toe and the reports that we get back from the medical examiner's doctors are very thorough
14:26and it's going to tell you everything because it also gathers even more DNA which is the hair samples and the fingernail samples and the fingerprints and the sexual assault kits and things like that
14:37there did appear to be defensive injuries she did appear to fight back and i think that is why
14:44the scene was so horrific was because the attacker really took that personally
14:50cause of death was blunt force trauma murder weapon was a hammer
14:54detectives looked for that hammer in the scene out the scene throughout the exterior of the whole apartment complex
15:00unfortunately the hammer was never located
15:03i believe that the individual responsible for her death immediately discarded it
15:10with the amount of blood that was in that scene
15:13i can't see how that hammer was going to be able to be used again without somebody asking questions
15:20back at the crime scene investigators learned that terry had been preparing to surprise her fiance for valentine's day
15:28unfortunately terry passed on on valentine's day in 1985 so february 14 1985 while detectives were moving through their investigation they had learned that her boyfriend was supposed to be coming back from being out of town and terry took the time to go through and bake him a cake she was trying to be you know the loving fiance he's been out of town i haven't seen him i'm gonna go to his apartment i'm gonna bake him this cake for valentine's day for valentine's day
15:57and she was really just trying to do everything she could so that her and her fiance would have a romantic evening in for valentine's day and unfortunately she never got to experience that
16:04police have the devastating task of notifying terry's family of her murder
16:12just a frantic phone call from my mother all i really remember is just a very panicked sound and just repeating over and over terry's dead terry's dead terry's dead
16:31well i stopped what i was doing and drove all the way to little rock to her house and i remember walking in and just collapsing on the floor in my mother's arms i don't really know what i did during that time i think i just was in survival mode and my mother was i can't even imagine what she was going through but i so admire her strength because she really did try so hard to protect
16:59i remember the church i remember sitting on the front row i remember holding hands with my grandmother i do remember that there was a huge turnout yeah i don't know how i would have done it without the number of friends that rallied around me i do remember days of people just coming over to the house and sitting up on my bed and sitting in the room and everybody just being together just being there for me
17:26it had to have been devastating terry was planning a wedding in the church where her funeral was held
17:36it was a shock and it was a stunning thing to get over suddenly this person is ripped from your life
17:44it didn't make sense and there were no answers
17:50investigators are determined to get justice for terry's heartbroken loved ones
17:55they start compiling a list of potential killers
17:58i would describe the the work from the original detectives as amazing police work based on
18:07the investigative techniques that were used in the 80s detectives back then which was two of them
18:13they knocked on every door in that apartment complex and also going to her school uta talking with all her
18:20classmates they're writing as they're you know getting all of this notes from every person that
18:25they don't talk to came back to be hundreds so if you were a sex offender in the area you were interviewed
18:34i mean it's really just knocking on doors and trying to get a timeline for all of these people on where were
18:41you during this time is there anybody that can verify and validate that one by one investigative leads dry up
18:49police have seemingly hit a dead end
18:53a case would typically go cold when if at that time there is no new technology or nothing to push the case
19:00forward to a satisfactory conclusion you go cold after 120 days going cold doesn't mean case stops it
19:10didn't stop and never stopped continuing to look into this case continuing to re-examine evidence and
19:17look for other dna companies and things like that the investigation into terry's sexual assault and murder
19:24goes cold for over 15 years until advancements in forensic science prompt police to take the case
19:31off the shelf we do understand that technology advances and technology advances very rapidly and
19:40in this particular case in 2001 the decision was made to resubmit items for processing the goal was
19:49would we be able to get a stronger dna profile that could be uploaded into codis codis is the combined
19:58dna index system it's a repository of all dna input so you put suspect dna in it you put people who have
20:06been arrested in it and you put unknown dna profiles into it to potentially give you a match it's much like
20:13apis is with fingerprints where you upload someone's dna and you look for a match we had a full dna profile
20:21of the suspect so we were really looking for something to generate a lead for us to get us to
20:26the next step in the case so in 2001 they retested a cigarette butt that had been found in the room
20:36and they discovered the dna of an unknown man the initial detectives did a great job tracking
20:43everybody down that they possibly could and then when codis came around even processing items from
20:49the scene and getting that entered unfortunately we just never got a hit
20:56the dna profile was in codis for many years without a hit and so we were at a standstill they reopened
21:07the case back in the early 2000s and there was no match in codis or anywhere and so you get your hopes
21:13up you never completely lose hope but you get your hopes up and then it goes cold again and then you
21:18think that it's just not going to happen we just thought we're going to be one of those families that
21:24doesn't ever get those answers arlington police are frustrated that the codis search produced no
21:31matches leaving terry's killer still at large and her family without answers but they refuse to give up
21:38unaware that just a few years later a newly formed cold case unit would harness emerging technology
21:44with the potential to finally break the case wide open
21:54it's been 20 years since 22 year old ut arlington student terry mcadams was found beaten and sexually
22:06assaulted in her fiance's apartment in texas despite the case being revisited throughout the intervening
22:13years police have been unable to identify her killer however a new cold case team is determined to reopen
22:20the investigation and find justice once and for all in 2005 when i became a homicide detective we had
22:29a dedicated cold case unit and terry mcadams case was one of the cases that those detectives went
22:35and looked at so with unsolved homicides we never closed the case it's always assigned to an active
22:42member of the homicide unit probably each time the case changed hands a detective would have called terry
22:48mcadams family introduced themselves and said i'm the detective on the case now and they would
22:53provide their phone number so if the family had something come up they could also call and get that
22:57person on the phone in 2023 the cold case unit sends dna samples from the crime scene and autopsy to be
23:06retested so the dna that we were able to get back from testing for terry was a mixture and basically
23:16we were able to determine that the dna profile that we got back was terry's dna and then an unknown
23:22male dna profile if we're able to determine that we have a mixture now is technology going to get
23:29better to where we're able to kind of split that going down the road that dna was able to be further
23:37tested which created a dna profile that was able to be a good enough candidate for the investigative
23:44genealogy based on the profile that they created that result came back to a black male that's when
23:51at the time detectives was able to exclude all white male and all caucasian and that's when we
23:57looked into further testing with genetic genealogy so i took a look and tried to figure out is there
24:03anything available that we could do to kind of push this case forward any dna evidence that may have
24:09been overlooked fingerprints anything like that and it seemed like our initial detectives had really
24:15done everything that they possibly could then i was told about the fbi's new genetic genealogy program
24:22myself and chief dish go set up that meeting to see if we can make that happen and get this case solved
24:29this emerging dna science was used to identify the infamous golden state killer in 2018
24:35and has since been used to solve hundreds of cold cases across the usa
24:41investigative genetic genealogy combines unknown suspect dna found at the crime scene with genealogy
24:48research and the use of public historical data to help develop new leads for law enforcement agencies
24:56we were really looking for cases that we could take to the fbi to do investigative genetic genealogy
25:02so i called the assistant special agent in charge at the dallas field office and they agreed to assist
25:07us with the case utilizing genetic genealogy for us to be approved to use investigative genetic genealogy
25:13the crime has to be a violent crime usually we look at sexual assaults homicides and unidentified human
25:20remains the suspect dna has to be uploaded into codus and have a negative result lastly all other
25:28investigative leads had to have been exhausted so the fbi got the dna profile in late 2023 we provided
25:37them all the information on the case we submitted a write-up of the case that was sent to fbi headquarters
25:43they assigned a special agent to our case that was assigned as a co-lead detective with our detective
25:48from our homicide unit and the two of them began working case almost instantly once the case was accepted
25:54by the fbi i would tell you the fbi in the dallas office are amazing they are a great partner to
26:02local law enforcement they have resources and financial backing that sometimes we don't have
26:09they really provided us with leads on this case based on their technical abilities that we couldn't
26:15have done on our own we gave the fbi everything we had created a synopsis for them based on everything
26:23that had been done unfortunately not every case is eligible for genetic genealogy it is very specific
26:30due to the type of dna that is necessary the fbi agreed that this was a significant case that they
26:36wanted to review i think that any time that you want to try something new i think it's it's not about
26:44being proud of yourself it's about providing answers to the families that's really why we do this job
26:50we really do this because we want to provide answers we want to provide justice digital forensics
26:56is evolving dna technology is evolving and we need to be on the cutting edge of those technologies
27:03and to continue to move forward to try to provide answers for families i know a multitude of evidence
27:11was collected in 1985 the key evidence that we ended up looking at was a cigarette butt that was found
27:18next to the body of the deceased because neither her nor her fiancee to apartment it was that she
27:25was located in smoked and the sexual assault kit that was performed on miss mcadams police did an
27:33amazing job of preserving evidence that they didn't even know how much value would have at the time dna
27:41was in its very early stages of discovery and they managed to preserve everything meticulously which
27:49allowed police to test items for dna multiple times because every time an item is tested that evidence is
27:56used up so they have to preserve as much as they can during the testing to allow for retesting at a later
28:03time the familial testing uses the y short tandem repeat or the y str which is more dealing with codis
28:12whereas igg uses a snip profile which is just a different dna profile that has more markers where
28:21usually an str looks at one to 17 markers a snip profile can look at 750 to a million different
28:31markers that doesn't mutate over time and that's how we measure family lineage we had already created
28:39the snip we had reached out to a private lab prior trying to move the case forward and the fbi was able
28:47to get the snip from that private lab and then from there they began to go through and build out a family
28:54tree they were able to isolate some new dna that was found and then do some genetic genealogy to trace
29:04back who may have been responsible for this and then we were given a match list when the private
29:12laboratory took over so we're going to start looking at that match list and doing what's called match
29:17resolution we're not given any more information than the general public who would be using these same
29:23databases and we have to positively identify the true identity of these matches and then we're
29:30going to start building those individuals into a family tree trying to connect them to the suspect
29:36trying to connect matches to matches and that's exactly what we started doing
29:41by mapping out family trees through genetic genealogy detectives begin building momentum in
29:47the terry mcadams cold case i was excited because the fbi was excited about it special agent webb immediately
29:56kind of got to work from there it was pretty consistent communication with myself and special agent webb
30:03until detective cofer came on board i ended up getting the case in january just a couple months later
30:09like ended up getting the call that he informed me hey we might have turned nothing into something as the
30:15words that he used so our top match that we were given who i believe was between 60 and 81 centimorgans
30:23which is not a great match from that report we got from the private laboratory they stated we should
30:30talk to several individuals who could be second cousins to this top match in the waco area so my
30:35partner and i traveled to waco texas and conducted a couple interviews of individuals who should have been
30:42the second cousin of our top match the problem was they were not a match to our top match which told
30:49us he was probably more than likely adopted so a couple weeks later we gave him a call extremely
30:54cooperative extremely nice person but he informed us he did not know who his biological family was
30:59if we can figure out who your biological parents are that will help us and it'll also help you are you
31:05okay with that and he agreed so what we essentially did was perform investigative genetic genealogy on
31:12our top match and we were able to identify his biological mother and then tie that family line
31:19into the suspect's family tree and that's when i told arlington police department hey we need to meet
31:24immediately because there's three suspects that have to be the killer of terry mcadams the youngest brother
31:31had passed in 1985 the middle child had recently passed in 2021 and the oldest brother was still
31:38living and he did not have a criminal history what i recommended arlington and they agreed on
31:43is let's find out everything we can about this brother that died in 1985 if that individual perished
31:49in january of 1985 we can eliminate him as a suspect so i asked arlington police and detective cofer
31:55i said can you find out everything you can on this individual named bernard lasalle sharp and what
32:00was revealed is in november 3rd of 1985 bernard sharp had broken a window of his soon-to-be ex-wife's
32:08home had killed her a cousin and critically wound to the third before turning the gun on himself
32:14it just told us this individual has a propensity for violence and we need to look further into this
32:20individual i was sitting at my desk and i remember special agent webb contacting me
32:29he calls me asking about a murder suicide that had occurred in november of 1985 and he wanted all the
32:36information that i could possibly find on it and i remember being puzzled and i and i ended up calling
32:42him and why do you want information on a on a murder suicide that occurred in 1985 and he tells me no i
32:49i think bernard sharp is who your who your suspect is at last investigators have identified a prime suspect
32:58bernard sharp but can they uncover the conclusive evidence needed to prove he's the man responsible
33:06for the brutal sexual assault and murder of terry mcadams nearly 40 years ago
33:18for nearly 40 years the brutal murder of 22 year old terry mcadams remained a mystery
33:28she was raped and bludgeoned to death in her fiance's arlington apartment in 1985
33:33the case went cold for decades but in 2023 arlington police joined forces with the fbi
33:40to harness the power of investigative genetic genealogy using a dna sample left by the killer
33:47and scouring public ancestral databases they finally uncovered a possible suspect named bernard sharp
33:58bernard sharp grew up in fort worth he had a criminal record but not an extensive one
34:04i believe he had been arrested for sexual assault of a child possibly a relative
34:09and he lived quietly under the right radar for most of his life his father was a banker and he
34:18lived in a very nice home with a good family there were kind of two sides to bernard sharp there was the
34:26side of you know a business owner maintenance man always having a smile on his face cracking jokes
34:33and then there was the other side the private side that people may not have actually known
34:38where he was a very violent person and just really seemed to not have any regard for women
34:45we knew bernard sharp lived in arlington in 1985 we knew he had been involved in other crimes
34:51and we knew that there was a connection to the apartment complex because he had been doing
34:56maintenance work it transpires that bernard sharp was on the original suspect list back in 1985
35:03and had been interviewed by police prior to his murder suicide bernard sharp was interviewed based
35:10solely on his criminal record and i believe from reading the notes he refused to provide a hair sample
35:18but he was on a long list of suspects at the end of 1985 in november he and his wife had separated they
35:28had had a heated relationship separated multiple times and he had gone back into their home without
35:35her knowledge and waited for her to come home she was there with her best friend and a cousin and her
35:42baby and older daughter were also in the home he had overheard a phone call in which she had been
35:47talking about him he pulled out a gun and she realized what was going to happen and she begged him to
35:53consider their baby that was in the other room and he shot her shot her best friend shot her cousin
36:00and then he killed himself well this individual died in 1885 and public records are telling me that he
36:08killed his ex-wife a cousin of hers critically wounded another one and took his own life we need to find
36:14the case file for this because if that individual has this propensity for violence he could be our guy
36:23when i heard this and when i looked into his case we knew we were onto something the crimes that he was
36:29also arrested for a sexual assault and he also lived in the area and he was a maintenance man and he really
36:37stood out during investigation while detectives grow increasingly confident that bernard sharp is terry's
36:44killer they still need a conclusive dna match to prove it to achieve that they devise a plan to locate a
36:51living relative and obtain a dna sample for comparison well reading those publicly found articles
37:00on the death of bernard sharp and the case file we knew that there was a three-month-old biological
37:05child of bernard sharp present during that homicide and so i requested the help of university of north
37:11texas's center for human identification i gave them the situation and said if i bring you a known
37:18reference sample could you compare that to our suspect dna and basically run a reverse paternity
37:24test and they informed me absolutely we could do that the hard part was now we have to locate this
37:30grown adult who was three months at the time is not going to remember any of this information of
37:35about the homicide of her her mother and the suicide of her father so we started doing research on where
37:42she could be located and once detective cofer and i located her we had to speak to our chain of
37:48commands and get approval to travel to interview this individual detective cofer came in my office
37:54and said chief we we got a lead detective cofer told me his name was bernard sharp and i could see
38:01the excitement on his face and it got me really excited because i knew this was a chance to really
38:08solve the case they wanted to fly to the northeast because they had located some potential family
38:13members there and that they wanted to go up there and interview them and see if they could get a dna
38:18swab from one of the family members we generally like to do in-person interviews that shows the
38:25the human emotions that a telephone call cannot provide this is a very serious emotional event for
38:33most people and we want to be in front of them when we show them all the circumstances and brief them
38:39on the investigation of why we're here with approval from the higher ups the detectives fly out to meet
38:46the daughter of bernard sharp to try and confirm a dna match we landed at approximately 9 a.m and we were
38:56not able to locate her until about 4 p.m that afternoon and that's when we developed a game plan of
39:03detective cofer is going to lay out the incidents of terry mcadams's homicide and then i'm going to
39:10come in and explain investigative genetic genealogy and what brought us to your door today we definitely
39:16had to immediately talk to her about why we heard her door you know why did we fly out and made sure
39:24she see our credentials and made sure that you know she trusted this situation generally these interviews
39:30start off a little standoffish but she was more than welcoming it was not her that answered the door
39:36it was another female during the interview with sharp's daughter detectives learn of another surviving
39:43family member who was present when bernard shot three people killing two of them before turning the gun on
39:49himself the other individual that was in the home ended up being the stepdaughter that was present at
39:56the bernard sharp homicide in 1985 and she was 14 at the time so she remembered the event pretty vividly
40:04but she was able to give us a more in-depth look at bernard sharp and it was an emotional event for both
40:09individuals we immediately started talking about bernard's life i was told that he was a part of
40:18his own maintenance crew i was told that he was a very violent man the way he harassed women you know
40:25exposed himself in front of women in apartment complexes that immediately started standing out
40:32the conclusion of that interview we were able to get additional information on bernard sharp
40:37and obtain a dna sample from that daughter i personally drove that sample from the airport
40:45and dallas fort worth straight to the laboratory and dropped it off
40:49and then detective kofar and i sat and waited because we didn't want to tell anyone too soon
40:54we don't want to get anyone's hopes up until we have that 100 confirmation that this is our suspect
41:01investigators deliver the dna sample from sharps daughter for testing anxiously awaiting the result
41:11detective kofar and i received an email at the same time confirming that bernard sharp was our suspect
41:18i was in my office when detective kofar came in and told me that it was a match
41:23to bernard sharp that the cigarette butt in the apartment was bernard sharps
41:26we discussed how much of a relief it was and but then we immediately started planning now we need to
41:35notify the sharp family that this information is about to come out and we also need to notify the
41:41terry mcadams family the phone rang i saw arlington pd on the phone and i you know heart started racing and i
41:49had a feeling that it was the call and it was so he just shared with me that they had found him i didn't
41:59know at that moment whether the person was alive or dead but that they knew for sure who it was
42:05i was so joyful but i was so sad too it's just a very i didn't know what to do with the emotions that i
42:12was feeling the motive i you know i don't think that we'll ever really know i i think the motive
42:20was sexual in nature i think his plan was to sexually assault terry and she fought back and he
42:28couldn't have that though investigators and terry's family are disappointed that her killer will never
42:35face justice they share a sense of relief now that the case is finally solved the cold case team reflects
42:42on how this breakthrough would not have been possible without the power of investigative genetic
42:47genealogy it was a great day to see the special agent in charge of the fbi to see the police chief
42:56all come with terry mcadams sister and the rest of her family i truly enjoyed getting to
43:05see how happy their family was i think the reaction was very well received by our community
43:12i think it shows our community the commitment we have to providing answers and justice to victims of
43:19crime i think it also gives other homicide victims hope that we can also solve their case
43:27the detectives in 1985 did everything they could have done and did it well i believe investigative genetic
43:34genealogy is the present and future of solving these cold case homicide and sexual assaults
43:41unidentified human remains when the the leads have run out when there's no tools left available
43:49if there's raw dna present i believe any case can be solved i believe there's always something that can
43:56be found it may not be something that we realize at the time but we leave traces of ourselves wherever we go
44:04i never met a family in my career who was so optimistic who was so loving who was so caring
44:13not just checking on the case but would call and just check on me you know how you doing you okay that
44:20has never happened in my career whatsoever and i've been doing it for approximately 10 years
44:25and still they still do it to this day i'm amazed at how they can take something that small and put it
44:34into a database and like building a huge puzzle it's mind-boggling to me but it means everything to me
44:41now because it's it's how we found our answers i'm very grateful for that technology i we wouldn't be
44:48here without it for our department we're always trying to be innovative and trying to find a way
44:55to move cases forward and if it's something that we're able to move forward with genetic genealogy or
45:01any new technology that comes to us we're going to try it do i have closure
45:07that's a word that i don't really think is real because i think to me closure feels like it's complete
45:18and and this will never go away have i found peace yes i'm at peace with knowing the answer that we have
45:26and i'm at peace with knowing that he's no longer walking this earth my first born is a daughter and i
45:33had said years ago that if i ever had a daughter i would name her and after terry and so she is she's
45:4128 years old and her name is terry ann she definitely lives on in our family she's never been forgotten
45:48we share stories and my children have always known who their aunt terry was
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46:27Transcription by CastingWords
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