- 6 weeks ago
Step into the world of true crime as we explore incredible breakthroughs that brought justice to long-cold cases. Join us as we uncover some of the most baffling mysteries that saw significant developments in 2025, finally identifying victims, apprehending culprits, or shedding light on decades-old disappearances. From genetic genealogy revealing hidden truths to modern forensics cracking seemingly impossible puzzles, these stories prove that time doesn't always erase the path to answers. Prepare to be amazed by these remarkable resolutions.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thanks to a determined Albany detective and DNA technology,
00:03police say they now know who killed Catherine Blackburn
00:06inside her home more than 60 years ago.
00:09Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're discussing
00:11the most intriguing discoveries made from previously cold cases in 2025.
00:16All that work up to that point had been, you know,
00:21well thought out and had come to a positive result.
00:26The 1991 yogurt shop murders.
00:29In Austin, Texas, in 1991, a quadruple homicide happened at a yogurt shop.
00:34Four teenage girls were the victims,
00:36and when police arrived, the building was ablaze.
00:39The yogurt shop had also been set on fire, destroying potential evidence.
00:44There was smoke and soot on every surface,
00:47so it kind of made fingerprinting kind of difficult.
00:50An experienced criminal was responsible,
00:52who turned out to be serial killer Robert Eugene Brashears.
00:55Unfortunately, it took law enforcement 33 years to figure this out.
00:59It was done through investigative genetic genealogy,
01:02but the criminal was never brought to justice.
01:04He had already ended his own life in 1999 during a heated police standoff.
01:09But most of his crimes happened after the yogurt shop.
01:13This was after being found with a stolen vehicle,
01:15a relatively minor offense,
01:17but it seemed to be the end of a pretty horrific crime spree.
01:20Case may now be solved, but the images of December 6, 1991,
01:26will always remain with Jones.
01:28I can definitely still see it.
01:31The Man of Somiedo
01:32Back in 2015, two hikers discovered a corpse
01:35outside the Spanish town of Puerto de Somiedo.
01:38For years, the body went unidentified,
01:41despite having very distinct features.
01:43Initially, no malice was suspected.
01:45They believed it was caused by a simple heart attack.
01:47This turned out to be not the case at all.
01:50In 2025, the deceased man's two brothers
01:53admitted to the police that they were responsible.
01:56They no longer wanted to care for their brother,
01:58but still wanted to claim his disability funds.
02:00So they let him die and managed to hide it for roughly a decade.
02:04For years, social workers kept coming to check in on him,
02:07but every time, he was suspiciously away from home.
02:10The Lee County Body
02:11In 1977, a skeleton was found in Lee County, Arkansas.
02:16At the time, they figured out that it belonged to a young man,
02:18but they couldn't identify him despite their efforts.
02:21To find answers, you have to be able to ask the right questions.
02:25And it has to start with,
02:26sometimes that first question we have to ask is,
02:28who is this person?
02:29That was until September 2025,
02:32when officials revealed that it was a man named Charles Howard Wallace.
02:36His family hadn't spoken to him since 1974,
02:39when he was in his late teens.
02:40They believe he would have died when he was around 21 years old.
02:44In March of last year,
02:45they reopened the case with help from a Texas forensic lab.
02:49And more than a year after that,
02:51they identified him and found two relatives in Tennessee.
02:54It's a massive discovery,
02:56especially when you consider the case is almost half a century old.
02:59Unfortunately, there is still a lot of mystery surrounding his death,
03:03but hopefully, this can also be solved in the near future.
03:06Sometimes they're just at a dead end.
03:08You know, they've tried everything.
03:09They've excluded people.
03:10Um, so to be able to give them this new information
03:14and have them go do what they do best and sort things out,
03:18uh, it's, it's great.
03:19Sheila of Nashville.
03:21In 1987, a woman's remains were found in a basement in Nashville, Tennessee.
03:25It didn't take them long to find the culprit,
03:27who was the home's owner, James Mitchell Schaefer.
03:30According to him, the woman was a sex worker
03:32whose identity remained unknown for decades.
03:35He called her Sheila,
03:36but we didn't know who it was until the victim's daughter
03:38talked to the police in 2025.
03:41Her mother had vanished back in 1984,
03:43and it turned out she was a woman named Sheila Cummings.
03:46Police said James Schaefer admitted he killed Cummings
03:49and the woman you see in this rendering.
03:51Their bodies were found in the basement of a home on Charlotte Avenue.
03:55Sadly, another victim from the same incident is yet to be identified,
03:58currently known as Lil Bit,
04:00but hopefully, this mystery can also be solved soon.
04:03The 1993 Californian Skull
04:05In Trinidad, Northern California,
04:07a partial skull washed up mysteriously on the shore in 1993.
04:12This was about six years after the disappearance of schoolteacher Kay Josephine Medin.
04:16At the time, searches failed to find her.
04:19Back in August of 1987,
04:21Kay's husband, Nicholas Medin,
04:23returned to the family's home in Hyampam
04:25and found his wife Kay missing.
04:26Her purse was there, but she was not.
04:28A few months later,
04:30some of her remains were sent to the local police anonymously.
04:33They managed to use dental records to identify the remains,
04:36but no one knew how she died or where the rest of her body was.
04:40Then in 1993,
04:41a man found a partial human skull
04:43100 miles away on the beach near Trinidad Head,
04:47but there was no DNA match to that.
04:50Eventually,
04:51the skull that washed up in 1993
04:53was identified as hers using DNA testing in 2025.
04:57It's a massive breakthrough after decades of the case being cold,
05:00and hopefully will help police solve the rest of the mystery.
05:04Kay's husband, Nicholas Medin,
05:06died in 2018.
05:08He was not a suspect in her death.
05:10The case is still open and considered a homicide.
05:13The Bear Brook Murders.
05:15Bear Brook State Park lies in New Hampshire
05:17and was the location of four connected homicides
05:19between 1977 and 81.
05:21They believe the man responsible was Terry Rasmussen,
05:25who had been known under many names,
05:27leading him to be called the Chameleon Killer.
05:29Fingerprinting confirms that he is the same guy,
05:33Curtis Kimball,
05:34Gerald Mockerman,
05:35Gordon Jensen,
05:36and at that point,
05:37he's taken into custody
05:37for the charges of child abandonment.
05:40Rasmussen was convicted of murder in 2002,
05:43then died in prison in 2010.
05:46Police only named him a suspect in 2017,
05:49after DNA analysis revealed he was the father of a victim.
05:52There's this sentiment around murder
05:54that the blood of the innocent
05:56will call out from the ground to God,
05:58and it's going to find justice
06:00because its DNA
06:01is going to point at perpetrators.
06:04Another development made in 2025
06:06is related to a victim's identity.
06:09Three of them were first revealed in 2019 by police,
06:12but the fourth was finally discovered in 2025.
06:15Her name was Ria Rasmussen,
06:18and she was his own daughter.
06:19Ria is the youngest doe ever identified
06:23using the DNA doe project
06:25since it started in 2017.
06:27Investigators say the work doesn't stop here,
06:29though they desperately want to find her mother,
06:32Pepper Reed.
06:33Jeanette Ralston.
06:34In 2025,
06:36Willie Eugene Sims was finally charged
06:38with the murder of Jeanette Ralston
06:39almost 50 years after it happened.
06:41Ralston was strangled to death by Sims in 1977,
06:44but without any leads,
06:46the case couldn't be solved.
06:47This is one case in particular
06:49that has haunted every cold case prosecutor.
06:53We've all looked at it and dug into it.
06:56That was until they found some DNA
06:57and fingerprints on a cigarette packet,
06:59a discovery made in August 2024.
07:02The prints were matched to the criminal,
07:04and in 2025, he was finally arrested.
07:07Earlier this year,
07:08investigators from San Jose and Santa Clara County
07:11traveled to Ohio to collect a DNA sample from Sims.
07:15They say that DNA matched what was found at the scene.
07:19This development happened because of major updates
07:22in the FBI's Thumbprint Database.
07:24It's not the first time Sims has been charged.
07:26Back in 1978,
07:28he was sentenced to four years in prison
07:29for assault to commit murder.
07:31We can't bring her back,
07:33but hopefully we can answer a lot of the questions
07:35that the family may have had
07:38and try to get them some closure
07:39and hopefully justice in that way.
07:41John Lorton Doe.
07:43In 1972,
07:44the remains of a young boy named Carl Bryant
07:46were found in Lorton, Virginia.
07:48It took them decades to identify the body,
07:50with the result finally happening in July 2025
07:53via genetic genealogy research.
07:56In the early 2000s,
07:57this sketch was created by the National Center
07:59for Missing and Exploited Children.
08:01DNA from the boy's autopsy
08:03was submitted to the FBI during that time,
08:05but there was no match until recently.
08:07Until then, he was referred to as John Lorton Doe.
08:11His mother, Vera Bryant,
08:13never reported him as missing.
08:14The crime was likely perpetrated by James Hedgepeth,
08:17his mother's boyfriend.
08:18A woman named Vera Bryant had two sons,
08:21Carl and James.
08:23She traveled with her partner,
08:24James Hedgepeth,
08:25to Virginia in 1972.
08:27The boys never returned.
08:29Vera never reconnected with family in Philly.
08:31Both individuals are deceased,
08:33so will never be brought to justice.
08:35Carl also had a brother named James Bryant,
08:38whose body has still never been discovered.
08:40Police think it's likely
08:41that both would have died around the same time,
08:43but until they find evidence,
08:45we won't know for certain.
08:46We believe that both boys may have been murdered
08:48on June 13th, 1972,
08:51between Pennsylvania and Virginia.
08:52We believe this is the route they may have traveled.
08:55The 1988 Albany kidnapping.
08:58In Atlanta, 2025,
09:00Reginald Colwell was given two life sentences
09:02with an extra 25 years for a crime he committed
09:04back in 1988.
09:06The man from Albany was 58
09:07when he was found guilty of kidnapping,
09:09sexual assault,
09:10and aggravated assault.
09:12The evidence was carefully preserved,
09:14despite them not having the technology
09:15to properly analyze it.
09:17Eventually, modern forensic science
09:19led them to the culprit.
09:20They began trying to match the evidence in 2019,
09:23which led them to get a warrant for Colwell's DNA.
09:26After decades of seeking justice,
09:28he was finally sentenced in June, 2025.
09:31I was shocked.
09:32I knew immediately that this was a game changer.
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09:51Louisa Dunn.
09:53Our final entry comes from Bristol in England.
09:56In 1967, a woman named Louisa Dunn
09:58was murdered in her own home.
10:00Neighbors described hearing screams,
10:02a woman's scream,
10:03as if she were being attacked.
10:05The following day,
10:06Louisa Dunn wasn't here
10:07by her front door in her usual place,
10:09but the sash window here was open.
10:11It took them 57 years
10:13to finish solving the crime,
10:14making it one of the longest cases
10:16to solve in UK history.
10:18After being cold for decades,
10:19it was reviewed in 2023.
10:22The technology they used
10:23was advanced enough
10:24to get a full DNA profile
10:25of the perpetrator,
10:26Ryland Headley.
10:28And more importantly,
10:2957 years after Louisa Dunn's murder,
10:32he was alive
10:34and living in a suburb of Ipswich.
10:36He was put on trial in 2025,
10:39and despite pleading not guilty,
10:41the evidence was not in his favor,
10:43and he was sentenced
10:44to life imprisonment in June 2025.
10:47Headley was 92 at the time,
10:49and it was actually the second time
10:50he had been given a life sentence.
10:52The first, from 1977,
10:54was later reduced
10:55to only seven years, though.
10:57And with this conviction,
10:58questions are now being asked.
11:00What kind of man could kill a woman,
11:02keep the secret to himself
11:03for nearly 60 years,
11:05and present himself to the world
11:07as a kindly old grandfather?
11:09Are there any other cold cases
11:10with major developments
11:11we failed to mention?
11:12Let us know in the comments below.
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