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00:00July 1979, a young woman is found murdered in her Portland apartment.
00:08Coming across any dead body is shocking and traumatizing.
00:13But to come into the place you are living and to find your own sister not only dead but murdered,
00:20I can't even begin to imagine how devastating and world-ending that would have been for her.
00:27A lot of times you're trying to figure out why.
00:30Why did you do this to somebody?
00:33Detectives have an extensive suspect list.
00:36One of the suspects that was developed a couple years after was precipitated by some photographs.
00:42I believe it said words to the effect of Anna was strangled with fission line in apartment 309.
00:51It sends you down a path.
00:52As a detective, you still have to run that down.
00:54You still have to be certain and rule it out.
00:57My goal was I wanted to protect those who couldn't protect themselves and catch bad guys.
01:03Detectives chase every lead, but the months turn to years.
01:07We're always working on these cases.
01:10They never die.
01:12The answer is there.
01:14I know it is.
01:16It's like if I could just transport myself back to that, like what am I missing?
01:20What did they miss?
01:22What am I missing now?
01:23What technique can we use now?
01:26Detective Hopper and McGuire are amazing detectives.
01:31They're some of the best cold case detectives on the West Coast.
01:34If there's a solvability factor in a crime, they'll find it.
01:37Criminals who have hidden in the shadows for years find there's no escaping science and their own family DNA.
01:45Welcome to Bloodline Detectives.
01:48Bloodline Detectives
02:18In the late 70s, Portland was not the cool place to be like it's perceived to be today.
02:32It was actually pretty much known as kind of a cheesy logging town, and it didn't really have anything going on.
02:44There was the blossoming of a punk scene that would lay the groundwork for the later grunge era.
02:51So Portland really has this very cool central feeling kind of area, and it makes for an interesting and eclectic place.
03:00Portland, when I was growing up, was kind of a really big town that really wanted to be a city.
03:05There were sections that were kind of hippie-ish and things like that, but when you're little, you don't really notice any of that.
03:17It's not until I went and left and came back and became a police officer that I really kind of noticed what Portland was like.
03:23It's a very progressive city in mindset, socially, politically, and also in police work.
03:31I think that we lead the country in a lot of our technologies and progressive attitude towards procedural justice and equity.
03:44There will be cycles of violence, from gang violence to street-level violence.
03:48But overall, Portland is a great place to live, and it is to work.
03:55Anna Marie Hlafka is a 20-year-old woman living on Cooch Street in northwest Portland, known for her kind and well-mannered nature.
04:03She enjoys fishing in her free time.
04:07Anna was a young woman that lived and worked in northwest Portland.
04:11She had recently moved in with her longtime boyfriend.
04:14They were happy, kind of having their first place together.
04:17You know, all those firsts that you have when you're in your early 20s, she was experiencing all those things.
04:23Her sister actually was in between residences.
04:27She was just returning to Portland and was staying with Anna and her boyfriend.
04:32Anna was a young adult.
04:34She enjoyed spending time with her family, her boyfriend, her group of friends.
04:38She was active in the pursuit of progressing her life forward.
04:41The description of her as a very calm, shy, quiet, loving, nice, just all of those things, all of those adjectives.
04:56But my understanding was that she and her sister Rose were very close.
05:02I know that she worked for McDonald's at the time.
05:04She had a good friend that also worked there.
05:06And her sister that had recently moved back to the area also worked there.
05:11So the three girls would work.
05:13They would walk back to the apartment.
05:14They would socialize.
05:15And then maybe one of them would go back to work.
05:19The area where she lived and worked at the time was a more blue-collar, working-class neighborhood.
05:26It did have crime, as most inner cities do.
05:29But it wasn't necessarily a violent place to live.
05:37On July the 24th, 1979, Anna's sister Rose arrives at her apartment.
05:43At first, everything appears to be normal.
05:45Just after 10 p.m. on July 24th, 1979, a call was made from that apartment at 18th and Cooch to the police.
05:58And it was Anna's sister.
06:00She had just come home from her shift at that McDonald's and came into the home, kind of hung around, went and had a seat.
06:07And she just thought that Anna was asleep on her bed.
06:10And when she called out for Anna, she didn't respond.
06:13And so she went to check on her to see what was going on.
06:16And that was when she made the horrific discovery of finding her sister lying on the bed with an electrical cord wrapped around her neck.
06:24The bedroom is right off of it's basically big enough to hold a queen-size bed.
06:29And Anna was lying on her back on the bed with sort of the lower half, lower portions of her legs hanging off the bed.
06:36She had a shirt on, a blue shirt, but she was naked from the waist down.
06:43And her pants and underwear were on the floor just next to the bed.
06:47In the kitchen area, there was food on the stove.
06:49The stove was still turned on.
06:50So whatever happened, it happened while she was in the middle of cooking.
06:56Anna's sister Rose contacted the telephone operator who then contacted the police.
07:00Uniformed officers were dispatched, and their job is to evaluate whether the scene requires detectives in the case of a homicide like this one,
07:08or if it's a natural death, as if someone has passed away from a long illness.
07:13In this case, it was clearly foul play.
07:16They contacted the detective division, and they sent detectives to process the crime scene.
07:21You know, you enter a crime scene, you're always going to leave something behind.
07:27Generally, they would shut down the apartment and come in, take photos.
07:32She was found with her shirt on, put her undergarments and pants off in her lower body,
07:38and she had been strangled in her bed.
07:42And seeing the crime scene photos, they're always horrible.
07:45A lot of times, you're trying to figure out, why?
07:48Why would you do this to somebody?
07:51An apartment is a first-floor apartment.
07:54The Tudor Arms Apartments is a secure building,
07:57so you either have to have a key access to the whole building, or someone has to let you in.
08:04The first-floor window was open.
08:06There was no sign of any forced entry.
08:08There's no documentation that there were footprints coming in the window or anything like that.
08:14We don't know if he knocked on the door, she answered it, and he overpowered her.
08:19It's just one of the questions that we'll never answer.
08:21But it was something that I spent quite a bit of time on.
08:24Like, I wonder how he got in.
08:28Anna's body is taken for an autopsy, where the cause of death is determined to be strangulation.
08:33So, as part of the forensic processing of Anna's body, they did do a sexual assault kit.
08:39I know that they did swabs of the intimate areas where we would hope to find physical evidence of the offender.
08:47And one thing in particular that they did in this case is they cut her fingernails,
08:52and they retained those fingernail clippings as evidence.
08:56Families want closure.
08:59They ask, you know, kind of the same questions.
09:02You know, why?
09:03Man, I have a little girl, a little boy, you know, especially that little girl.
09:06Families want closure.
09:07They want to know why.
09:08They want to know who did it.
09:09And sometimes that's what's needed to complete the grieving process.
09:14Can you imagine not knowing what happened to your son or your daughter and, you know,
09:20wondering how did they get in this situation?
09:22What occurred?
09:22Why did this person do this to them?
09:24They're my child.
09:25They're my baby.
09:26You know, they were so pleasant.
09:28I remember their smiles.
09:29And this person did this horrible, despicable thing to them and just left them there.
09:36A murder like this is always shocking, and especially when it's someone young.
09:41Anna was only 20 years old.
09:43She was well-known in the community.
09:44People saw her every day working at McDonald's.
09:47She was in a happy relationship on her way to marriage.
09:50And to have your life taken in such a brutal way and such a shocking way because there was no sign of her apartment being broken into.
10:00So there was no telling who this perpetrator was, which made it that much more terrifying because nobody knew if this was a disgruntled customer or someone that she didn't even know at all.
10:12And that terror could be felt in the neighborhood.
10:14Fear spreads through the community as Portland police race to catch the killer before he strikes again.
10:21Their first move, building a list of possible suspects.
10:25On July the 24th, 1979, 20-year-old Anna Marie Lavka is found murdered in her Portland apartment by her sister.
10:44Investigators begin their search for the killer by looking at those closest to her.
10:52One of the steps that the initial investigators did is everybody they would interview that had a reason to be in the apartment,
10:58they would fingerprint to try to get some elimination print standards, like Anna's boyfriend, close friends, associates of her boyfriend that would have visited the apartment.
11:08And the point of that is to find fingerprints that would possibly be the suspects, that couldn't be explained.
11:16I think they ultimately identified all but maybe four or five of those fingerprints in the apartment connected to either Anna or David or Rose or some other friend.
11:27And they would tie and track Anna's movements, who she had contact with during the day.
11:33You didn't have cell phone GPS data to track things like you do now or CCTV or any of that kind of stuff that you could look at.
11:41So it's all word of mouth interviewing people.
11:44They start canvassing the apartment complex, try and find out basically every person she knows who may have been there, who may have been around.
11:54Is there anyone that you can think of that would have had a reason or had some sort of ill will towards Anna?
12:00If you're a victim of a homicide, you're usually murdered by somebody you know.
12:06In the case of women, you know, the most likely person that's going to harm them is a man.
12:11Women aren't involved in a lot of violent crime.
12:14And generally that man is going to be the person they are around the most.
12:17And it's unfortunately a cliche at this time where if a woman is killed, the first person you're going to look at is their significant other.
12:24Her boyfriend is working.
12:29After he got off work, he met a friend at a local bar, had a couple beers and came home.
12:34And when he came home, police were there on scene.
12:37So that's how he found out that Anna had been murdered.
12:40He was cooperative from the very beginning.
12:42He did everything the police asked him to do.
12:44He provided blood samples, hair samples, fingerprints.
12:48He consented to doing a polygraph examination.
12:50I mean, he was very, very cooperative.
12:53Just by the nature of homicidal violence, you always look at the people that are closest to you because they have the most access and they have the most emotional involvement.
13:02And, you know, it's a very emotional crime typically.
13:05I think he was cleared very quickly in the minds of the detectives.
13:08They went back and verified that he was at the bar.
13:11He said he was.
13:11They interviewed the bartender, other patrons that were there, and everything he said was true.
13:20One of the suspects that came up pretty early was one of Anna's boyfriend's friends, who was also acquainted with Anna.
13:28They would go fishing together, socialize together, et cetera.
13:33He was relatively cooperative with the original investigators.
13:37He did some strange things that, you know, maybe in and of themselves wouldn't be strange.
13:43But when you're being looked at as a potential murder suspect, it's strange to detectives.
13:48And when Anna was murdered, he was crying, very, very upset when it happened.
13:54It was just very out of character for him.
13:56I would argue that he was never actually cleared because he was given a polygraph.
14:05He presented an alibi.
14:08Polygraphs are all based on your physiological responses to tests to these questions.
14:12Your heart rate goes up.
14:13And he would do things like intentionally tap his foot when the question was asked or to increase his heart rate or do things like that.
14:21Very common.
14:22So the polygraph examiner basically said he sabotaged the test, so we can't tell if it's true or not.
14:32A potential suspect emerges from the McDonald's where Anna worked.
14:35He was a guy who would spend a lot of time at the McDonald's, and he was known for harassing female employees there.
14:50His interview statements are very interesting.
14:53He would talk about very delusional statements that all the women, not only in the McDonald's, but just in general, were attracted to him.
15:04And I think there's one point where he talks about Anna, quote, flirting with him at McDonald's.
15:10And the investigator asked him what that meant.
15:13And he's like, well, she made me a cherry pie.
15:15You know, in his sort of mind, he was like, well, that was, you know, she clearly sort of wanted me.
15:20And so he was looked at considerably.
15:22His fingerprints didn't match any of those in the apartment.
15:24And he did take a polygraph and passed.
15:26Another suspect that came onto police's radar was a man who worked at a grocery store that Anna would go to.
15:36They had sort of a friendship, as much of a relationship as you have with your local grocer.
15:42But it was clear there was maybe a little bit more on his side towards Anna.
15:47So he was interviewed by police and given a polygraph.
15:50He did admit to having maybe a bit of a crush or maybe was even infatuated with her.
15:56But he passed the polygraph and there didn't seem to be any other connection besides crossing paths at the grocery store.
16:05Investigators turned their attention to a man living in the same apartment block.
16:11This case has many suspects that came up early.
16:15And one of the suspects was a gentleman that lived, I believe, two floors above Anna.
16:21I think he was an eccentric individual.
16:23He did try to talk to Anna relatively often.
16:26And she expressed that to her boyfriend as well as her sister.
16:30He was someone that the original detectives investigated quite extensively.
16:36They looked into him.
16:37They interviewed him.
16:39Polygraphed him, collected his fingerprints.
16:41And ultimately nothing came from that either.
16:43Ultimately, of everyone that they talked to, and none of those people, they all passed polygraphs or had a non-conclusive, inconclusive polygraph.
16:54Within probably the first, within a year, things pretty much fizzled out.
17:00And the investigation really, truly encompassed simply talking to every person that they could connect to Anna.
17:10And they had done that, and nothing sort of broke loose as far as any leads.
17:16And then it just fizzled at that point.
17:18But then in 1981, the police receive an anonymous package.
17:25So, one of the suspects that was developed a couple years after Anna's murder was precipitated by some photographs that were mailed to the police bureau in an envelope.
17:37And they were mailed anonymously.
17:39And there was about 40 pictures of the same individual taken kind of in that same downtown area.
17:45And one of the things that made those photographs interesting was this person in the pictures was seen standing next to some graffiti, some graffiti underneath some Portland area bridges.
17:58And this graffiti mentioned Anna's murder.
18:01Said words to the effect of, Anna was strangled with fission line in apartment 309.
18:07Portland police consider whether this is a hoax or if the killer is taunting them.
18:15The investigation into the 1979 sexual assault and murder of Anna Marie Lavka has gone cold until 1981,
18:35when Portland police receive an anonymous package containing photos of graffiti referencing Anna's murder and a mysterious figure posing beside it.
18:45So, these photos were sent to detectives in 1981, so a couple years after the murder.
18:53The original detectives followed up as much as they could at the time.
18:56And it was a lot of very strange photographs.
18:59A lot of it with the person that was holding a gun, him pointing at this graffiti.
19:03There was really no rhyme or reason.
19:05But one of the things that tied this person that was in the pictures was he was associated to one of the original suspects,
19:13the gentleman that lived a couple floors above Anna.
19:15He was an associate of his, had visited his apartment.
19:19There was a couple other people that also was related to this group.
19:23Those two individuals were also looked at as suspects.
19:25I think written off as a sort of joke, if you will.
19:31But I know from talking with Meredith that she delved deeply into that and tracked down a whole bunch of more information on that that was never even looked at in 1981 when they first got that.
19:43And we still don't know who actually sent those to the police bureau.
19:47We don't know why that happened, other than it was a circumstantial event that happened.
19:52It was within their community and it was something that they clearly discussed.
19:55Why you would write it on area bridges, I don't know.
19:59You know, it sends you down a path.
20:03Even if the outset of that, if you thought this probably isn't involved with us as a detective, you still have to run that down.
20:09You still have to be certain and rule it out.
20:12So either way, you're going to have to spend time doing that.
20:15I mean, that was kind of went down this pathway that led to nothing, but it still had to be done, right?
20:20You can't ignore that.
20:21And that was absolutely the right thing for those detectives to do.
20:23Pretty much just went cold until Portland's cold case unit started in 2004 and it was a grant funded unit.
20:42And in the very beginning, what they did was they looked at cases like this, cases involving sexual assault,
20:49cases with female victims that likely, that may have involved sexual assault,
20:53anything where there would be now likelihood of biological evidence that could be tested.
21:01So one of the things that they did is they contacted retired homicide detectives
21:06and they brought them back to assist the active detectives with investigating these crimes
21:12and going through all these old cases and seeing if the new technology can be employed in these older cases.
21:20In this case in particular, one of our retiree detectives did an evaluation of the case
21:24and they realized that there was these fingernail scrapings that had not been processed forensically.
21:30So the retired detective submitted them to the crime lab
21:33and Dr. Janelle Moore was assigned to work on it
21:37and she's the one that recovered the full DNA profile from these fingernail scrapings.
21:42And once that profile was recovered,
21:45that's when I, as an active detective within that unit, was assigned to work.
21:51Fingernail clippings was a huge part of processing a crime scene.
21:55In every case, they always take those fingernails.
21:58And there's cases where I've gone through and looked
22:00and it says that there's fingernails collected and we can't find them.
22:03You know if you have those, now you have a link to solve that crime.
22:08But that was a standard back then, was always take the fingernails.
22:12And to be forward-thinking enough to know that, hey, maybe this is valuable later,
22:16just because you know that she's scratching at them,
22:19that shows a lot of forethought into what the possibility is.
22:23Suspect profiles are uploaded into the national CODIS database
22:29and they are ran against offender DNA profiles attempting to make a match.
22:36So offenders that are convicted of a felony are required to provide a DNA sample,
22:42which is then uploaded to this database.
22:45And unknown profiles are submitted to search against the known offender DNA profiles within this database.
22:52And that was done in this case and there was no DNA profile found.
23:03The case stalls yet again, but the team refuses to give up.
23:08I think with some of these cases, you have a homicide case that you're not able to solve immediately.
23:14It's still your case and you don't want to give it up and you'll hold on to it.
23:17You know, you'll see in a lot of examples, it really needs another set of eyes.
23:20You know, the detectives have their own bias.
23:23I've read cases where they've locked on to the theory and they won't let go of that theory.
23:27And then I'll see McGuire come in or Hopper start reading it and say,
23:31oh, they're missing this whole other avenue.
23:32There was a lot of hope there because the forensic scientist obtained a full DNA profile that we believe was the suspect.
23:42So there was great hope, but then there was also a great disappointment.
23:46It was a lot of ups and downs.
23:47So every time I would go back, it's like, OK, I got to figure out this guy.
23:51I would just take each one and I would say, I'm going to figure out how this person fits in.
23:57And I would write down their relationship to her, how they would have had access to her.
24:02I would look at their original interview, if there was one, and kind of determine, you know,
24:06is there any way we can dispute what they're saying?
24:09And I went through that with each one of them.
24:11I got to the end of the suspects, and I can tell you, I contacted either family members
24:18or the possible suspects themselves of every single male individual that was listed in the report.
24:26It got to the point where I remember the last one.
24:29This is it.
24:30There's no one else.
24:32Unless something hits later in life, we are not going to solve this case.
24:37Detective Hopper takes another look at the friend of Anna's boyfriend,
24:43who was acting suspiciously when she was killed.
24:48I contacted him.
24:49He spoke very briefly about that time.
24:53He didn't want to talk about it.
24:54He told me he didn't want to talk about it.
24:55I asked him for his DNA, and he threw me off of his property
24:59and told me never to come back, and he would never cooperate with investigators.
25:04It makes us suspicious.
25:05I put some considerable effort into getting his DNA.
25:09I tried a couple different times to contact him.
25:12At one point in time, I called him,
25:15and he told me that he lived with a woman at the time,
25:22and I asked him if he still has contact with her,
25:25and he says, oh, no, no, no, she died of breast cancer many years ago.
25:29I checked that out, and she was not dead.
25:32Like he said, she was.
25:33I went and found her, and I interviewed her.
25:37She said that at the time, this gentleman was very upset by Anna's death,
25:43and she said it was always suspicious to her
25:45because he was not the type of person to show emotion at all.
25:50He was very stoic, and, you know, when someone exhibits, you know, out of character or emotion,
25:56it's something that we look at, of course.
25:59His hesitancy to cooperate with my investigation,
26:02his reluctant cooperation at the initial onset of this investigation gives us some red flags.
26:08It took a couple years to get his DNA.
26:11Ultimately, I had to write a search warrant to get it, and it was granted, and he finally did cooperate.
26:21And I was certain that it would be him, but it was not him.
26:24It was a sad moment for me, really, and I can't say that it's not a familiar one.
26:32In cold case work, it's one of the hardest parts of it, especially with these very old cases.
26:36I mean, it gets to the point where the case ages out of people that are still living
26:41and people that still remember and potential leads as far as recovering DNA.
26:47You know, in this case, I was able to track down relatives that were direct descendants of the possible suspects.
26:52We were able to clear it, but that's not always true in these cases.
26:56So the last DNA profile I got, and I was told, like, no, it's not him.
27:00I mean, it was, you know, you take on a little bit of ownership in these cases,
27:05and you want to make it better.
27:07You want to give the family answers.
27:08You want to solve the case.
27:09And in this one, I honestly thought, this is never going to be solved.
27:13It's a 40-year-old case.
27:14We're not going to get there.
27:18With everyone on the original suspect list ruled out, it seems like a dead end.
27:23But new technology is on the horizon.
27:28I transferred into the cold case homicide unit in 2016.
27:33And then we basically go on to work other cases for two years.
27:39Or so until the end of April 2018, when the Golden State Killer East Area Rapist case breaks in California.
27:48But before the actual solving, in the cold case investigator world, that was kind of the holy grail.
27:56Everyone knew about that case.
27:58And everyone was like, it's going to get solved at some point.
28:02And because it was just such a huge case.
28:06And I still remember Meredith and I were in Boise, Idaho, in a brew pub.
28:12And Chuck called us up.
28:15And as soon as we answered, he said, they caught the ear.
28:17The East Area Rapist.
28:18And we're like, oh, holy crap, this is huge.
28:23And so we flew back home from that investigative trip.
28:26And so we were like, I don't know how to do this, but I got to figure it out.
28:29So we frantically started looking online.
28:32And finally, we came across the Parabon Lab folks.
28:36So this investigation is a cooperative effort.
28:40It's cooperative between the Portland Police Bureau and the Oregon State Police Crime Lab.
28:45So the scientist that I was working with was Dr. Janelle Moore.
28:49So I talked this process over with Dr. Moore because she's the forensic expert, certainly not me.
28:54She had heard of this.
28:56She thought it was worth trying.
28:57So she needed to kind of do the scientific analysis of what exactly Parabon needed.
29:05And she was able to provide that to them so they could then conduct their investigation into the genealogy of the suspect.
29:15Almost immediately after the Golden State Killer case was solved using investigative genetic genealogy,
29:26Detective Meredith Hopper reached out to Parabon to see if we might be able to use investigative genetic genealogy
29:34to help her solve one of her cases.
29:37And so in June 2018, Parabon received the DNA sample from the crime scene of Anna Marie Lavaca.
29:48Anna was murdered in 1979 in Portland, Oregon.
29:53So this was a really old case.
29:55But fortunately, the original crime scene investigators had enough foresight to collect the right DNA
30:03and to store that for many, many decades until technology and science could catch up
30:11and use that DNA to identify her killer.
30:14The DNA sample that was provided to Parabon for the genetic genealogy analysis
30:20was fingernail scrapings.
30:23And so that means that Anna Marie fought her attacker.
30:28It doesn't appear she did initially.
30:31There was nothing knocked over in the home.
30:34But it appears that when he strangled her using the cord from her clock radio,
30:40she must have fought back.
30:41And she scratched him enough that his DNA was under her fingernails.
30:46This was a mixed sample, not surprisingly.
30:49It had some of the suspect's DNA and it had some of the victim's DNA.
30:52However, in this case, the suspect's DNA was by far the majority.
30:58And so that makes it more straightforward for us to be able to analyze that DNA sample.
31:04We worked with our partner lab and used a microarray to analyze the crime scene DNA.
31:11We looked at 850,000 genetic markers across the genome.
31:16That was completed in July.
31:19And then our bioinformatics scientists at Parabon worked on that data
31:23in order to make it viable for upload to the database.
31:28And Detective Hopper approved genetic genealogy research on July 30th, 2018.
31:35That's when we really get involved in the case.
31:38I assessed the matches, meaning I looked at what do we have.
31:42We are typically working with very distant relatives.
31:45And so in this case, we didn't get a lot of strong matches.
31:49We got two matches that shared about 90 centimorgans.
31:53It tells us who he's related to and quite distantly at that.
31:56So we have to build their family trees.
31:59We built the family trees of all of the top significant matches
32:03that were quite distant relatives.
32:06We determined that the matches were second cousin once removed at the closest,
32:12all the way out to fourth cousins once removed.
32:15Most of them were third cousins and third cousins once removed.
32:19And so these were all distant relatives,
32:22probably never even knew him or his immediate family,
32:25but they helped point us in the right direction
32:28to solve Anna Marie's murder.
32:33Once we're able to narrow it down to a likely suspect,
32:38we very quickly want to share that with law enforcement.
32:41So we quickly put together a report explaining our findings
32:45and scheduled a briefing with Detective Hopper and her team.
32:48At the last stage of this process, they contacted me and they said,
32:57we are prepared to give you a briefing on our results.
33:01And, you know, I've been disappointed many times in this case and in others.
33:04So I was excited about it, but I was afraid I was going to be told,
33:08yeah, sorry, there's nothing we can do.
33:10We set up a meeting and told me that they are going to email me their report
33:15about an hour prior to our telephone conference.
33:17So I remember opening my email and I'm reading,
33:20it's a multi-page document.
33:22And I get to the point where I see this photograph
33:26of someone that was in police custody.
33:30And I thought, well, that's interesting.
33:33So I read the paragraph, I skipped to the paragraph where his picture was.
33:38And I looked at him and I read further
33:41and he had been executed in Texas in 1999
33:45for the murder of three young people.
33:48Could this serial killer and rapist
33:51also be the man responsible for Anna's murder back in 1979?
33:54Portland detectives are investigating the 1979 sexual assault and murder
34:12of 20-year-old Anna-Marie Lavka,
34:15a cold case that remains unsolved for four decades.
34:19Despite years of dead ends,
34:20a recent partnership with the state crime lab
34:23and a forensic genetic genealogy company
34:25has finally led to a breakthrough.
34:29We were shocked.
34:30We were all sitting in Chuck's office
34:32and they were like,
34:34hey, we're pretty sure this is your guy.
34:35And they presented Jerry Walter McFadden to us.
34:39We were absolutely shocked.
34:40And we came out of there,
34:43we immediately huddled around, Meredith, Chuck and I,
34:45about, okay, now we need to confirm this,
34:48how are we going to do it?
34:49And came up with a whole sort of investigative plan
34:52to find out everything we could
34:53about Jerry Walter McFadden, his family.
34:56So Detective McGuire and I started researching Jerry McFadden.
34:59And one of the first things that popped up
35:01was the fact that he was executed
35:04for the murder of two young women.
35:06He was sentenced to death and he was executed in 1999.
35:10Part of our research is looking at him
35:12as an offender and also as a person.
35:14The photographs that come up of him are very imposing.
35:18His nickname was the animal
35:19and you can see why he'd be nicknamed that
35:22given his physical appearance
35:23as well as his terrible actions
35:25that he was ultimately executed for.
35:27Looks like how people would envision
35:29somebody from a motorcycle gang in the 70s.
35:32Got that long hair, got some tattoos,
35:35which, you know, are very, very common
35:37in Portland right now.
35:38At that time, you know, tattoos weren't common.
35:41You were either in prison, in a motorcycle gang
35:44or in the military to have tattoos.
35:46And yeah, I've seen that photo.
35:47He's got his shirt off and he looks pretty menacing.
35:51He'd clean himself up quite a bit for trials.
35:53He would try to lose a lot of weight
35:55so he didn't appear as imposing
35:58as he actually was to a jury.
36:04Jerry McFadden has an extensive criminal history
36:07and was baroled many times
36:09leading up to the murder of Anna Lavka.
36:11He was a brutal serial rapist,
36:16kidnapper, attempted murderer,
36:18and actual murderer.
36:19He didn't seem to display any kind of empathy
36:22or concern for others
36:24or even concern for himself getting caught.
36:26He really seemed like a wild card.
36:29You couldn't predict what kind of crime
36:31he would want to commit.
36:32And that, to me, is the scariest kind of criminal.
36:35He was first busted in the late 1960s
36:39for burglary and destruction of property.
36:41In 1972, his name appeared in the paper
36:43in a tiny article on the second page
36:45that read,
36:46Jerry McFadden, 24 of Breckenridge, rape.
36:49That first victim was just 14 years old.
36:52Before he could face charges for that rape,
36:54he was connected to another rape in February 1973.
36:57January 30th of that year,
37:00he had broken into a home
37:01and forcibly raped a 24-year-old junior high school teacher.
37:05He was then paroled in December of 1978
37:08after only serving that five-year minimum.
37:11Still on that parole,
37:12he was arrested in 1979,
37:14again for rape.
37:15This time,
37:16his victim was an 18-year-old secretary
37:17he had kidnapped from an oil field.
37:20He held her against a tree at knife point
37:22and raped her multiple times.
37:24He choked her until he thought she was dead.
37:26If Jerry had served that original 15-year sentence,
37:29he would not have been out
37:30and able to hurt this third victim.
37:32And you guessed it,
37:33he was released
37:34after only serving four and a half years.
37:37Even though he was not only committing rape,
37:40but also violating his probation
37:41and nearly murdered that young woman.
37:44He did promise this time, though,
37:46that he would follow the rules of his parole.
37:48And you've probably done the math again
37:50to realize that he was paroled
37:52just eight months before Anna was murdered.
37:59Jerry McFadden was a horrible person.
38:01Probably his biggest crime was oxygen theft.
38:03He traumatized a lot of young women in Texas.
38:06He was a psychopath.
38:08He had no sense of remorse or guilt
38:10or anything like that.
38:12But he was sloppy.
38:14He's not a Hannibal Lecter
38:15or anything like that.
38:16He's a sloppy drunk.
38:18He's big.
38:19And he used that to his advantage
38:20to do horrible things to people
38:21and wasn't able to function in society.
38:24And so he took matters into his own hands
38:26to get things he wanted.
38:28You know, it's a real travesty.
38:31But it's still only an investigative lead.
38:34Jerry McFadden's DNA is needed
38:36to confirm he is responsible
38:38for the rape and murder of Anna Lavka.
38:42So we were able to track down
38:44some close members of his family.
38:46We asked for their cooperation
38:48with our investigation.
38:49We explained what the investigation was.
38:52These family members really didn't have
38:54any information to say
38:56why McFadden was in Oregon.
38:58He was somewhat distant
38:59from these people's lives
39:01because of his criminal behavior.
39:03They wanted to give the family answers.
39:06They didn't act surprised
39:08that this was happening.
39:09It was more regret
39:11that there was more connection
39:13with a terrible crime.
39:16They did cooperate with us
39:17and they did provide the DNA sample
39:19and they wanted to know.
39:21They wanted me to call them
39:22before this whole thing
39:24went more public.
39:25And they wanted to pass along
39:27a message to the family
39:28that they were so sorry
39:30that that had happened.
39:33The DNA from the family
39:35was sent to Dr. Janelle Moore
39:37and it was a 100% confirmation match
39:40to the DNA found at Anna's crime scene.
39:44It was satisfying
39:45to finally get that information.
39:48Like, we finally have him.
39:49We finally know the person
39:51that is responsible for this crime.
39:54But we still had to solve
39:56why he was in Oregon.
39:58Still didn't have that loop closed.
40:00And that was something
40:01that was important.
40:02That was a question
40:03that we got from Anna's family
40:04is, you know,
40:05how if this person is from Texas
40:07and all their crimes
40:08are committed in Texas,
40:08what was the link to Oregon?
40:11We found an associate of McFadden's.
40:14We traveled back to Texas.
40:16We found this person
40:16and they explained
40:18how McFadden got up there.
40:20This person had a relative
40:22that lived in the Portland area.
40:25She was leaving Texas
40:26on a road trip
40:27to drive up
40:28to see her family member.
40:30McFadden's sister
40:31was this woman's friend.
40:34And he found out
40:36that she was leaving town
40:38and leaving the state.
40:40And in her words,
40:41he bullied his way
40:42into the trip.
40:43And she told me
40:44how afraid of him she was.
40:46She said that
40:48they drove nonstop
40:49from, you know,
40:52South Texas
40:52all the way to Portland.
40:54She said they never
40:55spent the night anywhere.
40:56They would fuel up and go.
40:58And she said the reason
40:59she did that was
41:00is she was afraid
41:01he would kill her.
41:01She said that
41:06when they finally
41:06got to Portland,
41:07she said she pulled off
41:09and let him out
41:10and she never saw him again.
41:12But that's the only connection
41:13that we have been able
41:14to establish.
41:18He's up in Portland
41:19probably for maybe
41:20eight weeks at the most.
41:22And that's when
41:22this crime occurs,
41:23you know,
41:24four weeks into,
41:25you know,
41:25him being up here.
41:27That's what makes it
41:28all the more amazing
41:30when we learn
41:31that it's Jerry McFadden
41:32during this Zoom call
41:33because without that,
41:36there's absolutely no way
41:38he's ever connected
41:39to Portland
41:40or this case.
41:41This would have never
41:42been solved
41:42without genetic genealogy.
41:44But I just thought
41:45it was so amazing.
41:48Someone takes a life,
41:49God provides a witness.
41:50Yeah,
41:50that evidence
41:51he left behind
41:52is the witness.
41:53Genetic genealogy
41:54makes it possible.
41:54The forensic investigative
41:59genetic genealogy
42:00in and of itself
42:02is enormous.
42:03But the other thing
42:04it has done
42:04is it has driven
42:06all other forensic science
42:10from the collection of DNA
42:12to the processing of it
42:13to now we can get DNA profiles
42:16from such an infinitesimal
42:17amount of material
42:19as compared to 20 years ago,
42:2130 years ago.
42:22And you can go back
42:23and all of them
42:24are at least worth
42:25looking at again.
42:26We used to say
42:27in the cold case world
42:28that we're not even
42:29trying to solve them.
42:30We're just trying to push them
42:31further down the road
42:32so that eventually
42:32someone can solve them.
42:34So when you actually
42:34get to be that person
42:35or that team
42:36that solves them,
42:37it's phenomenal.
42:39I think the more cases
42:41we end up seeing
42:42with forensic genetic genealogy,
42:45the more cases
42:45we'll end up seeing using it.
42:47It's still a little bit novel
42:49and people still aren't quite sure
42:51how it works,
42:52but that was also the case
42:53when DNA came onto the scene
42:54and you had to explain
42:55to jurors how it worked
42:57and why it mattered.
42:58It's the same thing
42:58in these cases.
43:00So the more we educate
43:01the public about what it is
43:02and what it does,
43:03the more we educate
43:04police officers
43:05so that they know
43:06what evidence
43:07might be important,
43:08the more cases
43:09we can end up closing.
43:10So it does bring me hope
43:12that between good police work
43:14and good technology,
43:16everyone can work together
43:17to really close
43:18some of these
43:19seemingly unsolvable cases.
43:22The news that the case
43:25has been solved
43:26is particularly emotional
43:27for Anna's sister, Rose.
43:31I spoke with Rose
43:33a couple times
43:33in the investigation,
43:35primarily at the end
43:35of the investigation
43:36once we identified the suspect.
43:38But we did go
43:38to her and her family
43:40relatively towards the end,
43:42but before we identified
43:43the suspect.
43:44And Rose was very gracious
43:46in talking with us
43:47about her relationship
43:49with her sister.
43:51She walked through discovery
43:52of her sister that day.
43:54And even so many years later,
43:55someone doesn't get over that.
43:57They were close as sisters.
43:58I would say not only
43:59as sisters,
44:00they were good friends.
44:01And to have that type
44:03of trauma,
44:05you know,
44:05really for the rest
44:06of your life.
44:07I mean, yes,
44:07we have identified the suspect.
44:09We've given them those answers,
44:10but it doesn't take
44:11the hurt away.
44:13She still was robbed
44:14of her sister
44:14for really the rest
44:15of her life.
44:17One thing that Rose
44:19relate to me
44:19is that Anna's boyfriend
44:21seemed to never really
44:22recover after this.
44:24He always carried
44:25this feeling of pain
44:28and trauma
44:29and maybe wondering,
44:30you know,
44:31if he was here,
44:32maybe that wouldn't
44:33have happened.
44:35He was relieved
44:36that a suspect
44:37was identified.
44:40One of the problems
44:40with these cases
44:41is when a suspect's
44:43identified,
44:44it's almost like
44:45this crime happens
44:46to them again
44:47because there's
44:48a lot of media.
44:49You know,
44:49when we solve one of these,
44:51it gains a lot
44:52of media attention
44:53just because it doesn't
44:55happen very often.
44:57And the media attention
44:58is a double-edged sword.
44:59You know,
44:59it's good in a way
45:00because it tells offenders
45:02that are out there
45:03that it's been 40 years
45:05that we're still
45:05looking for them.
45:07But for the family,
45:08it brings it all up again
45:09that it ever goes away.
45:10But it brings it more
45:12to the forefront.
45:13And I know
45:14when I spoke to
45:15Anna's boyfriend,
45:16he relayed that to me,
45:18that he said
45:18it's very, very difficult
45:19to relive this.
45:21We had a press conference
45:22about this case.
45:24I invited him to that.
45:26And he said
45:27it was just too hard.
45:29It was just too hard
45:29to see all of that
45:32and to see her pictures
45:32and to relive that.
45:34But, you know,
45:35for them,
45:36it never really goes away.
45:37We'll see you next time.
46:07We'll see you next time.
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