- 2 days ago
#CinemaJourney
#Naming the Dead
#Naming the Dead
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FunTranscript
00:00Hey, Mr. Atchison, I need to pick up my body.
00:10Appreciate you.
00:10Yes, sir.
00:19This box contains the remains of our victim that we have yet to identify.
00:26Her entire body is in this little bitty box.
00:31We call her Tyler Jane Doe.
00:35She's been in there for 38 years.
00:43October 1st, 1985, we had a mowing crew up on Interstate 20, and they saw the skull.
00:51So myself and two other detectives went up there, and we saw something sticking out of
01:00the ground.
01:02And as you pulled on it, then you pulled up the shorts.
01:06And then under the shorts was the shirt that says Top Rail Country Music, Dallas, Texas.
01:15We searched the area.
01:16That's when we came up with her watch and butterfly earring.
01:23She was placed out there nude.
01:25All her clothes was in a pile right beside her.
01:28It was very evident that she was murdered.
01:31There's not a day go by that I don't think about this case.
01:37It's been 38 years that I've been trying to identify this young girl.
01:43Somewhere there is a family that's missing their daughter, their loved one.
01:50So I want to identify her.
01:52It's time to put her to rest.
01:57Tyler's a great little town.
02:25Tyler's a great little town.
02:26I grew up here.
02:27I've watched it grow from brick streets to paved highways.
02:32I've seen single-lane roads now go to double highways.
02:39Every time that I go to Dallas, I drive within a couple hundred yards of the location we found
02:43her in.
02:44It's a constant reminder that we haven't identified her.
02:51Tyler Jane Doe's body was found in 1985.
02:54By the side of the I-20, 70 miles southeast of Dallas, just outside of Tyler.
03:06David Turner was one of the first homicide detectives on the scene.
03:09We actually parked up there where those trucks are coming down.
03:16We walked up and we saw the body laying there, the skull, 80 foot off the interstate.
03:25We walked this whole area just thinking that, well, maybe she didn't have a purse or she didn't have a wallet or something.
03:32And after they killed her, maybe they, you know, threw the wallet on further out here in this woods.
03:39But there was nothing.
03:46I pulled up the autopsy.
03:49They believed that she was a female, 20 to 25 years of age.
03:53The height is 63, 65 inches.
03:56So five foot four, I believe.
03:59They estimated that she'd been there anywhere from a year to possibly up to a year and a half.
04:04When this first started, we really thought that, hey, it won't be that hard.
04:09We'll find a missing persons report, thinking that we might identify her.
04:13And we never have.
04:15After nearly 40 years on the case, David's retirement is fast approaching.
04:22Time's running out for me.
04:24Before I retire, before I die, I want to identify this girl.
04:29I'm organizing an email to the DNA Doe Project.
04:34The DNA Doe Project is a groundbreaking organization that brings together some of the best genetic detectives in the world.
04:43To help crack cold cases.
04:53These are tough to look at.
04:56I can't imagine what this young woman must have gone through.
05:04She didn't deserve this.
05:06The mission of the DNA Doe Project is to return unidentified human remains back to their families.
05:20So they're not sitting in a box on a shelf somewhere.
05:23They are getting a proper burial.
05:25The project's volunteers upload each Doe's DNA to public databases to try to find genetic relatives who they hope can lead them to the identity of the body.
05:39And now, they're focusing on Tyler Jane Doe.
05:44We've asked David to send samples of Tyler Jane Doe's remains to the lab so they can extract DNA.
05:52David sent hair, a foot bone, as well as a bone from the spine, a vertebra.
06:07But it turns out only 20% of the DNA was human, so that wasn't going to work for us.
06:18Because the samples were exposed to the elements for over a year, the DNA is either too contaminated or too damaged.
06:26Even by our standards, Tyler Jane Doe is a really difficult case.
06:34We need more DNA.
06:37There is one last technique the lab can try, described as a brute force approach.
06:44We have to cobble together the DNA we got from the foot bone and the DNA that we got from the hair.
06:48It's time consuming, and there's no guarantee it'll work.
06:52But without enough DNA, the case is unlikely to ever be solved.
06:57If we combine these attempts, maybe we could just get enough DNA to make a profile.
07:08So let's go for it.
07:18Even though the DNA Doe Project has the case now, we still have a homicide we need to solve.
07:35This was a reconstruction one of the doctors did 38 years ago.
07:41Back then, they come out looking like cave people, you know.
07:44One of the DNA Doe Project volunteers has updated the facial reconstruction, mapping the shape of the skull with photos of real people.
07:57This reconstruction picture is a whole lot better, it's more lifelike, and someone may recognize her.
08:04David plans to revisit old leads with the new facial reconstruction.
08:15First up, the country music bar that was named on the t-shirt found with the Doe.
08:20The top rail has always been the best lead, and I'm headed to meet a lady that worked at the top rail during the time period.
08:29I believe that my victim disappeared, that she might recognize her.
08:33Hello, Deborah.
08:42Back in 1985, I found the skeleton remains of a young girl.
08:46She had a t-shirt on, it said Top Rail Country Music, Dallas, Texas.
08:49Right.
08:51So this is a facial reconstruction of her that we had done.
08:55Oh, my.
08:56She does not look familiar at all to me, but I do recognize the shirt.
09:02Tell me about the top rail, what was it like?
09:05It was pretty rough, real rough back then.
09:09Lots of fights, shootings, and it was crowded.
09:13Oh, man, it was packed.
09:15It was a crazy place, it really was.
09:18I bet you it was.
09:20For a young woman like Tyler Jane Doe, the early 80s would have been a heady time to be in Dallas.
09:29As the city rode high on an oil boom, a wild party scene emerged.
09:34Exciting and seductive, it could also be dangerous.
09:39You kind of felt safe, but if you went very far from the top rail, you didn't feel safe.
09:45The top rail was close to one of Dallas's roughest neighborhoods.
09:52The Harry Hines Boulevard.
09:55An area notorious for sex workers, drug dealers, and violence.
10:02I was hoping we'd be able to get through at least this calendar year without another tragedy situation.
10:08But again, you know there's a lot of murders out there.
10:10Harry Hines is just a few interchanges away from the I-20, the highway where Tyler Jane Doe's body was dumped.
10:26I just can't even imagine if it were my daughter.
10:32Yeah, she's exactly right.
10:34That's awful.
10:37I was kind of hoping that she'd look at her and say, oh, I know that girl.
10:40Yeah, she used to come in here all the time, but she didn't.
10:50At the time that we found this girl, I had a five-year-old daughter.
10:56Now she's 43.
10:58This poor little girl never made that.
10:59Huh. They finally got it.
11:17The brute force approach worked.
11:20The lab has successfully extracted Tyler Jane Doe's DNA.
11:24Now we can try and start to figure out who she is.
11:30The next stage of the investigation uses online databases to try and find genetic relatives of the Doe.
11:39These databases contain the DNA profiles of millions of people.
11:46And when the team upload the Doe's DNA, it is automatically compared to every one of them.
11:55If any share DNA, it's called a match.
11:59Now I can start the upload.
12:04Here we go.
12:06A match could share as much as 50% of their DNA, which would make them a parent, sibling, or child of the Doe.
12:14Most matches share 2% or less, which can make it take years to solve.
12:21I'm a little nervous.
12:26This is a crucial point in the investigation.
12:29Very soon we're going to find out what we're dealing with.
12:35All right, let's see what we have.
12:37So our closest match shares 10% DNA with our Doe.
12:46It could be a first cousin.
12:49This is better than I hoped for.
12:56Normally we all work from home, but since David is retiring soon,
13:00we're going to meet up with the team that's going to work on this case.
13:04And I'm really excited.
13:17Rhonda's bringing together 17 of the DNA Doe project's most experienced volunteers
13:23to try to discover the identity of Tyler Jang Doe in the next 48 hours.
13:28We want to do as much as we can in the weekend, but still get everyone back to their day jobs.
13:35It gets very exciting when we get close.
13:39Nobody can sleep.
13:41We just keep going until we find it.
13:48We are looking for a female born 1959 to 1967.
13:53She was about 5'4", 127 pounds.
13:58We know from her DNA that her ethnicity is mostly Hispanic.
14:04Now let's talk about the match list.
14:07So our match sharing the most amount of DNA with Jane is most likely first cousins.
14:14Fantastic.
14:16Oh my God.
14:20So let's work this top match together.
14:24Rebecca, would you start building her tree?
14:28Okay.
14:29If the top match is the first cousin of Tyler Jane Doe, they should share grandparents.
14:39So the team must search birth, death, and census records.
14:44To build a family tree back two generations from the match to their grandparents and then down to figure out which route leads to Tyler Jane Doe.
14:53They start by looking for the top match's parents.
14:59Is this her mother?
15:00Yeah.
15:01She was born October 1936, according to the public record.
15:07Okay.
15:08And there is an obituary under Rodolfo, born in Fort Worth.
15:13This is it.
15:15So we have her grandparents, Rodolfo and his wife Juanita.
15:19Oh, nice.
15:20Yeah.
15:21Okay.
15:22The top match's paternal grandparents appear to have Hispanic heritage like Tyler Jane Doe.
15:29How many children did they have?
15:32One, two, three, four, five, six.
15:36One is the father of the top match.
15:39So we're looking for a child of one of these five people.
15:43It's super exciting because that is so close.
15:46As the team worked to identify the victim, David is concentrating on finding the killer.
16:03There is another unsolved murder case that still haunts him.
16:07These are the crime scene pictures of Belinda.
16:13And he suspects they're linked.
16:16Belinda was found in January of 1985, two miles from where our victim was found in October 1985.
16:24She had a black sweater and blue jeans on, so that there is the victim.
16:31The only difference is that Tyler Jane Doe was placed out there nude.
16:36Belinda still had all her clothes on.
16:40Both bodies were found on the side of the road.
16:42The intersection right back there is where our victim was found, and right up here is where Belinda was found.
16:57Belinda was a sex worker.
17:00She worked the Smith County area, and she'd get on the CB and talk to the truck drivers.
17:07If you want to have a good time, come in, and they'd pull into the rest area, and she'd get in her truck.
17:12Truckers call them commercial company selling sex in moving motels.
17:17Getting in a truck with someone, you're at their mercy.
17:33The small lady that both of these victims were, they could be overpowered very easily.
17:39Knowing that Belinda was a sex worker, I was kind of thinking that Tyler Jane Doe might also be doing the same time.
17:51With so many similarities in the two cases, David is concerned they may even have died at the hands of the same killer.
17:59There's been many serial killer truck drivers that have killed girls across the U.S.
18:14If we could solve the Tyler Jane Doe case, it might lead to a serial killer that's traveling up and down the interstate.
18:20Five sisters, okay.
18:31We're all here except for one brother.
18:33The team has spent nearly three hours trawling through public records for any information about five of the children of Rodolfo and Juanita to see if any of them could be the Doe's parent.
18:44It's like pulling a thread on a sweater to unravel the whole sweater. We need to have that little start of a thread.
18:52They're trying to eliminate them and their children one by one.
18:57Some have no daughters. Others have no children the right age.
19:03But that leaves two who each have a daughter that could be Tyler Jane Doe.
19:08What did you find?
19:09They had a granddaughter named Cindy.
19:10What's her name?
19:11Cindy with an S. S-I-N-D-Y.
19:12Okay.
19:13Okay. And her date of birth is 1957. So she's very close to the range.
19:26One of the things that really caused us to take notice was the multiple marriages year after year after year, which indicates great instability.
19:33Cindy got married very young. She gets married several times and then she has a last marriage to this gentleman Crowe.
19:47January 26, 1984.
19:50Okay. So let's do proof of life and see what we can find.
19:52Cindy married five times by the age of 27 and her last marriage was in 1984, the year that Tyler Jane Doe is believed to have been murdered.
20:06Any evidence that Cindy was alive after that would rule her out.
20:13So far, we cannot find proof of life past 1984.
20:18I want to search in one of my PI databases and see if I can find anything more.
20:33Kevin is the only member of the team to hold a private investigator's license.
20:38So I found an arrest record for Cindy in 1981. We can see that Cindy was arrested for larceny, theft by check.
20:56Okay.
20:57It's $200 to $10,000 check.
21:01But one thing that's interesting is it shows she was 5'4", 110 pounds, hazel eyes, black hair, born in Texas, and she had a safe deposit box that apparently she didn't pay for.
21:17And so the contents of the safe deposit box are her unclaimed property.
21:20She had abandoned property in the amount of $131.
21:25So it seems like somebody that was desperate enough to steal money would not leave money behind.
21:32Yeah, probably not.
21:34Unclaimed money is a strong indicator that Cindy was no longer around.
21:39But whether that's because she was murdered or left in a hurry is hard to tell.
21:45I haven't been able to find anything after that yet.
21:49Well, the lack of evidence is certainly exciting.
21:52Yeah.
21:54Right. That's what I just found.
21:57This is a picture that Rebecca found of Cindy.
22:00Wow.
22:01Yeah.
22:02It's a high school photo. Do you know what year?
22:04She was age 16.
22:061972.
22:07Okay.
22:08Oh, wow.
22:09So we're now going to compare it to the image that we have here.
22:20Where is it? There it is.
22:21Oh, look at that.
22:23Oh, wow.
22:25Unbelievable.
22:27Look at that.
22:29Talk about chills.
22:30I know, I have chills.
22:32Hairs.
22:34Wow.
22:35It's David.
22:36Hi, David.
22:37This is Rhonda from the DNA Doe Project.
22:38I have some news.
22:39We've been doing some research and we have a familial line of interest.
22:56So I was wondering if you'd be able to come down so we can show you a few things.
23:01That's exciting.
23:02I'm just so glad this is moving forward as quick as it's moving.
23:05Thank you very much.
23:08Rhonda is confident they've identified the Doe.
23:12So she's asked David to join them for an official handover.
23:18We want names and current info, current address, current phone number for her parents.
23:25Any other evidence that we need to present.
23:27So we have this husband, Larry.
23:30We were taking a look and we found an interesting series of articles and I think this husband of hers was a convicted murderer.
23:41Oh.
23:44Killing five people in 1982.
23:4982.
23:50Oh.
23:51Including a 11 year old child.
23:54Oh.
23:55It was a very brutal murder.
23:57And he was executed in 2000.
24:00Oh.
24:04Texas seems determined to get even with Larry Robeson, even though he's clearly insane.
24:10He has been sentenced to death for murdering his lover and four neighbors, two of them children.
24:14I remember making the decision that I had to kill everybody in the whole world.
24:20I had this notion that if I killed everybody, that no one would die.
24:25Not really.
24:29Which husband was this?
24:31This was the second husband.
24:32Okay.
24:33Cindy married Robeson in 1977, but divorced him in 1979, three years before he was arrested for these murders in 1982.
24:45With our last record for our candidate being in 84, I'd imagine that there wouldn't be any culpability.
24:52Right.
24:53A very crazy coincidence.
24:54Oh.
24:55There's a possibility that he may have been let out for a time, but we're not certain when.
25:00So we need to have David Turner look into this.
25:05So not only are we going to present him with a possible candidate, we could be presenting him with a possible suspect.
25:13I don't want to get too excited about this, but this is as close as we've been in 38 years to identifying this girl.
25:38How are y'all?
25:42Good.
25:43So good to meet you.
25:45Nice to meet you.
25:46We hug in Texas.
25:48Have a seat, please.
25:49Thank you, ma'am.
25:51All right.
25:52I have some documents that I want to share with you.
25:55This female right here is of great interest to us.
25:59Cindy, Gina, born in 1957.
26:02So that's right about the range that we were looking for.
26:05She has a criminal record, charges of larceny.
26:10But what I really want you to look at here is look at her estimated height.
26:16Yeah, 5'4".
26:175'4".
26:18And that's exactly the height estimated for our doe.
26:22Her weight was 110 pounds.
26:24Very close.
26:25Very close, yes.
26:26Very close.
26:27And she's from Fort Worth.
26:29Yes.
26:31Now I'd like to talk about the spouses of Cindy.
26:36Cindy was married five times.
26:40Husband number two is of particular interest.
26:44He was put to death by lethal injection in the year 2000.
26:49But they were trying to overturn that due to an insanity plea.
26:55So he may have been released at some point.
27:01If they file an insanity plea, they don't get released.
27:04Okay, so that would rule them out then.
27:06Yes.
27:08We found no activity for Cindy beyond the marriage to husband number five in 1984.
27:14That's where everything stops.
27:17Would you like to see a picture?
27:19Yes.
27:25Wow.
27:27Pretty close, isn't it?
27:30We thought so too.
27:31To actually put up a beautiful face with what only thing I've ever had to look at, you know, through the last 38 years is really amazing.
27:46Yeah, I thought of a hundred things on the way down here, what y'all were going to tell me.
27:51But this is good.
27:52This is great.
27:53And just, you don't know how much I appreciate y'all.
27:56And I'm going to get the poor little girl out of our evidence ring.
28:01And I don't know if y'all have been told, but I was planning on giving her a burial.
28:10So I have, or my family, we have five plots at the cemetery.
28:16So I was going to donate one of those plots.
28:18She deserves to have a decent funeral.
28:22When I found out that we were as close as we were on this, I said, let's hold off.
28:28I didn't want to bury her.
28:29And then like, we found her family and then her family wants her back up there, you know.
28:38Hello, everyone.
28:39Hi.
28:40I'm so glad to meet y'all and thank y'all for all y'all's hard work.
28:48Appreciate y'all.
28:49And George, yeah.
28:5138 years I've been working on this.
28:54Trust me, it was worth the drive down here to get this information and to meet y'all.
29:00Again, I appreciate every one of y'all.
29:04I need to give y'all an applause.
29:05I'm excited to make this first phone call to see if we can give our unidentified girl a name.
29:30I'm going to call the mother.
29:42Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system.
29:47My name's David Turner.
29:48I'm a detective with the sheriff's department in Tyler.
29:51If you could call me back, I will probably be here for about an hour.
29:56An hour.
29:58It's in there.
29:59No, I didn't feel like we could call.
30:16You broke the abord.
30:18That's the mother.
30:19Miss .
30:21Mr.
30:23Yeah?
30:25My name's David Turner.
30:26I'm a detective with the sheriff's office in Tyler.
30:29I always hate to talk to people over the phone about things like this,
30:34but I'm trying to locate someone that might be a relative to a Cindy.
30:41Is there a possibility you know who that is?
30:45Well, I'm her mother.
30:48Okay.
30:49Hey, do you know where she's at, or have you talked to her lately?
30:56I haven't spoken to her in close to 30 years.
31:03We have a young girl that we found quite a number of years ago
31:08that we've been trying to identify.
31:11Would it be all right if I traveled up to Fort Worth tomorrow
31:15and meet with you and sit down and show you everything I have?
31:19And this might possibility be your daughter.
31:26Oh, that would be fine.
31:28That would be fine.
31:29Okay.
31:30Thank you so much.
31:31Yes, ma'am.
31:31You don't mind.
31:32Okay.
31:32Bye-bye.
31:33Bye-bye.
31:33And this pretty well looks like the DDP was right on the button.
31:40According to her, hadn't spoke to her daughter in many, many years.
31:45So pretty sure this is going to be her daughter.
31:48Bye-bye.
32:02Bye-bye.
32:09Bye-bye.
32:11My cousin was Gina's last husband, and his name was Philip Crow.
32:40They came to my house from the airport from flying in from Texas.
32:46They were going to start building a brand new family and a new path, a new adventure
32:51in Alabama.
32:54I was about 16 at the time.
32:58Gina was one of the very first people that I'd ever seen from somewhere other than Alabama.
33:04She just looked so different, like she stepped right out of a magazine.
33:10She came across as very friendly and had a wonderful laugh.
33:15She was so young, and she just had a baby.
33:20Margo was about six weeks old, maybe two months.
33:24And Gina went back out to Texas to pack their house, and it seemed like this vibrant, beautiful
33:30life walked into the airport.
33:33And then she was just swallowed up by the world, never to be seen again.
33:38I believe that when she got on the airplane to go out to Texas, she had every intention
33:46of coming back here.
33:50I never seen my mama, never knew what she looked like.
34:00Sometimes I would have fantasies that she would come back.
34:05I thought, well, if she ain't come looking for me this long, maybe she really don't want
34:25me.
34:26David and Rhonda are on their way to meet Margo and Michelle to find out more about Gina's
34:30disappearance.
34:31I'm going to try to recover any other evidence that we may not know.
34:41Michelle remembers when Margo and Gina and Philip arrived there.
34:48So she could have been one of the last people to see Gina.
35:01Hello.
35:02I'm David Turner.
35:03Nice to meet you.
35:04Sit down.
35:05Hi.
35:06The last thing that we know about Gina is she was visiting y'all, and y'all took her to
35:26the airport to fly home.
35:27Mm-hmm.
35:28Gina flew back to Dallas to pack up the house, and then Philip was to drive out there and
35:35bring everything back.
35:36Did she say about how long you think it would be before she'd get the house packed up to
35:42come back to Alabama?
35:43About a week or two.
35:45So Philip did leave, though, and...
35:47To go out there, yes.
35:49Mm-hmm.
35:50Yes.
35:51And then he shows back up a week later.
35:53With everything but without her.
35:55Yeah.
35:56And how'd that conversation go?
35:58Well, I mean, it's just, she went missing.
36:01She wasn't at the house.
36:04What did Philip ever tell you about your mother?
36:08He wouldn't really tell me much.
36:10He would just tell me that she abandoned me.
36:15He would not talk about her mother at all.
36:19I think a lot of people in the family really wanted to ask him, but everyone was afraid
36:24to do so.
36:27He was known for having a temper, drinking, and nobody wanted to set him off.
36:35I was brought up by my dad, Philip Crowe, when he remarried to my stepmama.
36:47He stayed drunk all the time.
36:50He didn't really pay me no attention.
36:56I just did stuff on my own.
37:03When I asked about my mother, Gina, he would just tell me that she abandoned me.
37:13I think he really wasn't telling me the truth, because he really didn't want me to know.
37:21Nobody reported her missing.
37:24You know, if I came to pick my wife up and she wasn't there, the first thing I'd do is call the police.
37:31That's what I would do.
37:33Now that I'm talking to David, I think she was murdered.
37:42It might have been my daddy.
37:46You'd think your cousin wouldn't do that, but it is one of the options.
37:56Philip passed away a few years ago.
37:58Margo found him laying on the floor in his house.
38:01He had a heart attack, I believe.
38:05I really wish that Philip had been alive, so that he could be questioned.
38:10Because she didn't deserve to die the way she did.
38:14Taking someone that small and dainty and beautiful, far off the side of the road, and just leaving them there.
38:21Like, she meant nothing.
38:23It still hurts, but at least now I know that she didn't just abandon me.
38:30No.
38:31No.
38:32Absolutely not.
38:33No.
38:34Mm-hmm.
38:35I love my children.
38:36I tell them all the time, I never had my mama, and I want y'all to know that I'm trying and I'm here for y'all.
38:47I'm so sorry you missed out on that, Margo.
38:50Oh.
38:51I'm sorry.
38:52It's okay.
38:53I'll be okay.
38:54Well, I got something for you.
39:11The only thing we found besides her clothes was her watch and a butterfly earring.
39:17Wow.
39:18So we want you to have that.
39:21I appreciate it.
39:22Yes, ma'am.
39:25And I appreciate y'all for not giving up.
39:28Well, thank you.
39:29My theory all along was she got into a big truck, and the truck driver killed her.
39:44Everything changed.
39:45Everything changed.
39:46I'm in Alabama.
39:47Now, I'm thinking the husband did it.
39:52But if Phillip did kill her, I don't think we would have ever obtained enough of evidence unless he actually told us I did it.
40:06Somebody got away with murder, but at least her family know what happened to her.
40:17If David had not spent all of his career looking for answers for his Jane Doe, Margo would never have Gina back.
40:26That is her closure.
40:28In 40 years, that's a heavy weight for her to carry.
40:32She doesn't have to carry it anymore.
40:35She doesn't have to carry it anymore.
40:36She disappeared while she was
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