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David Muir
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Brandon Best
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Kristen Mittleman
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Brandon Best
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David Muir
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Brandon Best
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Kristen Mittleman
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David Muir
Tonight we take you inside two cases. Two young women, both brutally murdered in their homes. The killers in each case evading police for decades. In one case, a mother just 19 years old. She was engaged to be married.
Sam Smallcomb
Her fiance, who was about to marry her, adopt her daughter. He gets home and he immediately notices something is wrong. There's blood smeared on the stairway.
David Muir
The killer had attacked her in the bedroom.
Courtney Swartz
There was handprints of her trying to hold the door closed. And she just wasn't strong enough.
David Muir
Another case in Texas. A beloved teacher, her whole future ahead.
Kristen Mittleman
Of her, drove in to Memphis.
David Muir
She just started a new school.
Kristen Mittleman
She was loving teaching her students. She was in a very good place.
Brandon Best
Now, what's your emergency? What's going on? What did your daughter do? She's been murdered.
David Muir
You remember walking in and what you discovered?
Kristen Mittleman
I remember walking into the bathroom and seeing her body on the floor.
David Muir
She'd been handcuffed.
Kristen Mittleman
That's correct. She had been handcuffed with her hands behind her back.
Jeffrey Middleton
There were about 36 degrees different wounds on her body. She put up a fight.
David Muir
Of course. The question who would want to kill each of these women? The mystery behind their murders would torment their loved ones for decades.
Kristen Mittleman
They've got handprints, they've got footprints. Why are they not finding this person?
Courtney Swartz
It was like the talk of the town forever.
David Muir
And for the detectives who were working these cases, frustrating dead ends, there was also a suspicion. Could it have been a member of law enforcement?
Brandon Best
Right. There was no forced entry, so our speculation was that it was somebody that she knew or somebody that presented a position of authority that could have garnered that trust to get inside the apartment.
David Muir
All of these questions lasted for years and years.
Brandon Best
Yes, yes.
David Muir
Both of these brutal murders were cold cases for decades. And what links both of those cases all of these years later is the cutting edge forensic technology inside this lab. Tonight, you'll see it unfold right here as they unmask the killer. In both cases, it's the first week of December 1988. 19 year old Kathy Swartz is home with her nine month old daughter. In Kathy's living room, a tree decorated and ready for the First Christmas for.
Jeffrey Middleton
Her little baby, she was living with Mike Warner. The they were setting up their life. Although he wasn't the father of the child. They were a couple and they were trying to make their way.
Kristen Mittleman
He definitely came in and kind of was her knight in shining armor. They were a happy little family.
Todd Peters
Mike got up around 5:30 in the morning for his job.
Sam Smallcomb
He gets home at 3, 3:30, and he immediately notices something is wrong.
Jeffrey Middleton
Things were in disarray. Blood up the banister. And then in the bedroom was Kathy. Very bloody, unclothed mostly.
Sam Smallcomb
He would later describe it. It was like the walls were painted with.
Todd Peters
Mike is so distressed, he immediately runs to a neighboring apartment because he can't bring himself to call the police. Mike does go back into the apartment.
Sam Smallcomb
To find her daughter Kathy's baby, who's nine months old, dressed in pants, a shirt. She has one sock on. Her diaper looks like it's been recently changed. She was standing up in the crib when Mike walked in.
David Muir
This is that baby left standing alone in that crib all those years ago. She's now 36 years old. How was your mother described to you?
Courtney Swartz
Beautiful. Happy. Go lucky. She did love, like AC dc, Metallica. She was like a little rock and roll girl. And everybody tells me that I was like her whole world.
David Muir
So you were 16 years old when you read the police report?
Kristen Mittleman
Mm.
Courtney Swartz
It was awful for somebody to do what they did to her, knowing I was in the crib right next door. I just couldn't believe that somebody could do that.
David Muir
So detectives had questioned at the time whether or not this suspect had changed the diaper.
Courtney Swartz
Yeah, when the police got there on scene, I was dry. I didn't have a dirty diaper on. And it was some hours I was alone.
Sam Smallcomb
So one of the first things that investigators notice is that there doesn't seem to be any sign of forced entry, which again, suggests that she knew the person who came in and killed her.
Kristen Mittleman
She was very good about locking her doors. I would call her and I would say, hey, I'm gonna come over. And I would go to her door. It was locked. And I would knock, and she would, you know, who is it? And then she would let me in.
Todd Peters
We theorized that the assault started in the kitchen, because in the kitchen there was passive blood drops on the floor. And then the smearing goes up the stairway to the upstairs bedroom.
Sam Smallcomb
There are defensive wounds found on her hands. Her throat has been cut in multiple places. She's been strangled.
Kristen Mittleman
She fought like hell. She was trying to protect her daughter. And she did.
David Muir
And the idea that this happened and you were just a couple of feet away.
Brandon Best
Yeah.
Courtney Swartz
Makes me mad that I wasn't old enough to help her. I'm 100% convinced she was trying to save her baby. Cause I feel like she would have just ran outside and yelled, but I was upstairs, and she wasn't gonna leave that apartment without me.
Todd Peters
In the bedroom where Kathy was found is a phone. On the bed, the phone cord was cut. But on the phone, there was Kathy's fingerprints. And then there was also an unknown fingerprint in blood in 88, obviously DNA was in its infancy.
David Muir
The fingerprint on the phone, how significant?
Courtney Swartz
Very significant because they were in actual blood and it was not my mom's.
Sam Smallcomb
There is a bloody footprint in the bathroom. It looks like the suspect took a shower after the murder to try to maybe wipe the blood off, clean up. But in the process of doing so, he left behind a left footprint, size nine in blood.
Jeffrey Middleton
And then the person left without being seen and without being discovered.
Kristen Mittleman
It was very unsettling that something like that could happen. It just didn't make any sense. None of it made any sense.
David Muir
But when crime scene investigators passed through the that gruesome scene again, this time with a new forensic light source, they find a new clue, and one that was imperceptible to the naked eye.
Jeffrey Middleton
It was like a great big neon clue. It's like, holy smokes.
David Muir
South Lanes is a bowling alley in Three Rivers, Michigan. It's the social epicenter of this small town where Kathy Swartz's father ran the pro shop after her brutal murder back in 1988. It also became a place that connected Kathy's daughter Courtney, to her mother.
Courtney Swartz
I grew up in the bowling alley. I spent a lot of time there. I was raised by my grandparents. They tried to fill the void as much as they could.
David Muir
What were you told about your mother's absence when you were a little girl?
Courtney Swartz
About first grade, they had told me that a bad man had hurt my mom and she was up in heaven. And when it would thunderstorm, they would tell me that that was my mom up in heaven bowling a strike. So it was pretty cool watching the thunderstorms as I was little, because I'm like, oh, she must be bowling pretty good today.
David Muir
Your mother's best friend, Jennifer, has told you a lot about your mom.
Courtney Swartz
Yes, she has.
Kristen Mittleman
Kathy and I were very good friends. I've known her since grade school, so we've been friends a long time. Kathy was like somebody you could count on. She was a good Listener always there for you. Just a, you know, good person.
David Muir
Childhood friends. Kathy and Jennifer both found themselves pregnant as teenagers and formed an unbreakable bond. They would talk on the phone several times a day until December 2nd, when Jennifer couldn't get ahold of her best friend.
Kristen Mittleman
A police officer came to my apartment, and he asked me to go to the station. I remember him asking me questions, you know, do you know anybody that would want to hurt Kathy along those lines? And I finally just was like, what's going on? Is Kathy okay? And he told me, and I just. I don't even remember. Um, I know that the first thing out of my mouth was, is Courtney okay? Where is Courtney?
Courtney Swartz
I do remember pictures of our first Christmas tree. And she had presents under there for me, but she never got to give them to me.
David Muir
We can see it's the pain you still carry with you. They were a young family just starting out. Kathy and Mike Warner had only been engaged about three weeks before her brutal death. And since he was the one who found her body, you know, of course police would have a lot of questions for him.
Sam Smallcomb
When the police initially interviewed him, he had this kind of flat affect to his voice. He didn't seem to be all that upset that she was dead. He didn't get emotional, and that seemed very suspicious to police.
Kristen Mittleman
I can't imagine, you know, walking into that scene and what that does to somebody.
Todd Peters
There was polygraph examinations that were done with. We were able to verify that he was at work in Sturgis all day long, and there was no way he could have came back to Three Rivers to do it.
Kristen Mittleman
I had no doubt in my mind that he didn't have anything to do with this. You know, I knew it in my heart. No, he loved her. She and Courtney were his world.
Jeffrey Middleton
I go by Judge Geoffrey Middleton now, but at the time of this, I was chief assistant prosecuting attorney. We would have maybe one homicide a year. Not a young woman killed alone in her apartment during broad daylight. At that point, they were leaving no stone unturned.
Todd Peters
So the police department actually rented the apartment for a month after the crime just so that we could return and. And continue to look for clues and process. This is one of the first cases where they deployed alternative light sources.
Jeffrey Middleton
They went into the crime scene with a black light.
Sam Smallcomb
On the refrigerator. They noticed two pieces of writing. Metallica was written on the refrigerator, and Harley was here. These were inexplicable writings that apparently had been erased.
Jeffrey Middleton
And we found that that someone had written on her body, probably a magic marker. On the inside of her thigh and said, I was here. With an arrow pointing up toward her groin that was not visible to the naked eye.
David Muir
And when detectives speak to Kathy's friends, they hear about an ex boyfriend named Troy Schultes. It turns out he had a nickname, Harley, which, of course, got their attention. He was a huge fan of the band Metallica.
Sam Smallcomb
In fact, he has a Harley Davidson decal on his truck. The truck was spotted outside Kathy's apartment that very afternoon of her murder.
Kristen Mittleman
Well, that's who I told him to look at and all to question. I know a lot of other people did, too. I don't know how to really describe it, but it was not a good relay. They were not good together, you know.
Sam Smallcomb
When they further look into him, he doesn't have an alibi for that afternoon, so he immediately becomes their number one suspect. They pick him up for questioning.
Todd Peters
Troy Schultes admitted that he was the one that wrote on the refrigerator and on the wall in the apartment, but he never admitted to writing it on her thigh.
Jeffrey Middleton
And he said, well, I didn't do it.
David Muir
And still, with no solid alibi for the night of the murder, police zero in on Troy.
Kristen Mittleman
I thought, that's gotta be it, because, again, it's gotta be somebody she knew, somebody she trusted.
David Muir
And before long, an arrest in the Kathy Swartz case. It's announced. But if investigators think they've got their guy, a rude awakening is ahead. Kathy Swartz's daughter Courtney, the baby left standing in her crib after her mother was brutally murdered, is a mother herself now.
Courtney Swartz
Why are you breaking everything?
David Muir
And she and her four children have stayed in Three Rivers, Michigan, finding comfort in a mother that she lost when she was just a baby.
Courtney Swartz
I do bring the kids out here for, like, holidays, her birthday. But I also do come out here a lot by myself, too.
David Muir
Back in 1988, police believe they found the perpetrator who brutally murdered Courtney's mother. The man whose nickname was scrawled across her refrigerator, her ex boyfriend, Troy Schultes.
Todd Peters
You know, you look at that and you think that's somebody leaving a calling card behind, that they were there without.
David Muir
Any kind of solid alibi. And now, under a cloud of suspicion, Troy is arrested, he's charged, and he pleads not guilty.
Todd Peters
We had the fingerprints, but we also had a sample of blood that was left behind. We believe because Kathy fought back, that whoever the killer was had sustained an injury and Troy's blood type did not match.
Sam Smallcomb
They take fingerprints and footprints from him, and those prints also do not match.
Jeffrey Middleton
So the charges were dismissed. As it turns out, he was wrongfully arrested and wrongfully charged.
David Muir
So with the investigation now back at square one, the Three Rivers Police Department, they refocused on matching the fingerprint and the footprint found at the crime scene to the killer.
Todd Peters
We had fingerprinted and footprinted so many individuals that had been living in Three Rivers at that time, and none of them were a match.
Jeffrey Middleton
I thought we would solve this quickly. So the first month passed, we didn't. No. Three months passed, a year passed, and it wasn't solved.
Sam Smallcomb
Police even looked at similar crimes that had taken place elsewhere in the area. They took fingerprints, footprints. There was no match.
Jeffrey Middleton
And the case got colder and colder.
David Muir
And as DNA technology improves, law enforcement, they continue to work the case.
Todd Peters
We Fast forward to 2012. We're going to going over the evidence again. The fingerprint that they had found on the phone was in the suspect's blood, and it was still in viable condition to obtain a DNA profile from that. And we enter it into codis and we think that's gonna give us a hit. And of course, it doesn't.
David Muir
As the years continue to pass, the mystery and the collateral damage for this whole community only grew. The town was haunted by this. Did you feel the eyes of the town on you as you were growing up?
Kristen Mittleman
Yes.
Courtney Swartz
And I was the baby. So, like, everybody wanted to take care of the baby and, you know, like.
Kristen Mittleman
It'S still that way when you don't have answers, you just have questions all the time. But it definitely changed me. It really changed me. I slept with a machete under my mattress for years.
David Muir
So every December 2nd represents another year without justice for Courtney and her grandparents. Today, the family is together, remembering Kathy on the anniversary of her death.
Kristen Mittleman
It's hard.
Courtney Swartz
Real hard.
Kristen Mittleman
I felt a certain point that I wasn't sure that they would ever find out.
Brandon Best
Probably right there before she died.
David Muir
It's been 25 years, but remembering hasn't.
Kristen Mittleman
Gotten any easier for. For David Swartz, I think.
David Muir
Yeah.
Jeffrey Middleton
Probably the worst thing for me. Why.
Sam Smallcomb
Why, why?
Brandon Best
Why did it have to happen like something like that?
David Muir
When you look at these kinds of cases around the country, there is generally an investigator or a detective who never gives up.
Courtney Swartz
Yes.
David Muir
And in this case, it was Jeffrey Middleton.
Kristen Mittleman
Yes.
Courtney Swartz
He is a great guy.
David Muir
What was it, do you think, that kept him going on this case for so long?
Courtney Swartz
He was young, just starting out, and this was really the only cold case in our town.
Jeffrey Middleton
I spoke more time on this case than any other case in my entire career. Sometimes in later years I would pretend I was on vacation and lock myself in the library and just go through this file. As Courtney got older, she would call me sometimes and ask if I knew anything. And I never had any answers.
David Muir
Police have DNA, fingerprints and a lot of physical evidence.
David Mittleman
What they don't have is the person.
Todd Peters
Who murdered a 19 year old Three.
David Muir
Rivers woman in 1988.
Brandon Best
Here's a lot of the evidence right from property.
David Muir
Eventually, the Three Rivers Police Department decide to partner with the Michigan State Police. They're convinced that with advances in DNA testing technology that the Kathy Swartz case can finally be solved.
Todd Peters
In Kathy's case, we had DNA that was in CODIS and we had not gotten the match. We had exhausted, you know, the fingerprints and these things which normally get us a hit, did not. So I honestly felt like the genetic genealogy was our only chance for solving this case.
David Muir
And then three years ago, Othram, a forensics lab in Texas, now enters the picture a promising something. Everyone close to the Kathy Swartz case has waited decades for answers. Othram uses DNA technology to help identify victims and perpetrators when law enforcement cannot.
David Mittleman
They knew that it was an unknown male contributor to that DNA, but they didn't know who it was.
David Muir
All these years later they said, well, look at this and see if there's something you can do with it. And you were convinced you could.
David Mittleman
We were absolutely certain that we could help the Michigan State Police work this case.
Todd Peters
They said, we'll get you a lead back. We're not going to guarantee that it's the lead, but we'll get you a lead.
Kristen Mittleman
They had over a thousand suspects. All of a sudden it's narrowed down to four.
Todd Peters
It was our breakthrough.
David Mittleman
Una silla de masajes puede pares er extra pareser extravagante.
David Muir
This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info and if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed. Or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. @lifelock.com podcast terms apply. In 2022, a package containing DNA. That single bloody fingerprint from Kathy Swartz's pink phone arrives right here at this building just north of Houston. You know, to the outsider it looks like just another office building. But what's actually happening inside in these labs is now changing how investigations across this country are being solved. This is the headquarters of Othram, a cutting edge forensics lab that's been mentioned in some of today's most talked about criminal investigations. And Othram has been credited by law enforcement with helping to solve cases that have been unsolvable for years now. How are you?
Kristen Mittleman
Hi. It's good to see you.
David Muir
Good to see you.
Courtney Swartz
How are you?
Kristen Mittleman
Thank you. Welcome to othram.
David Muir
David and Kristin Mittleman are the husband and wife team behind all of this.
Kristen Mittleman
Everything you see on our right side will be forensic. Everything you see on the left side will be research. Not every case is suitable for DNA testing. Right now, burnt remains, exploded remains, really difficult mixtures. But we hope that one day we live in a world where every case can be suitable for DNA testing.
David Muir
So you'll hold on to remains for a while and keep trying.
Kristen Mittleman
We don't give up, ever.
David Muir
The Middleman's partnership, both in work and in life, actually began over a few blind mice. It's the year 2000. You've just started your PhD at Baylor. You're doing a study on mice.
Kristen Mittleman
I was.
David Muir
And there was another young scientist, David.
Kristen Mittleman
Yep. So our projects collided and he actually cured my blind mice. So I thought, wow, if this guy can do that, I think I'll marry him.
David Muir
David Middleman had worked in biomedical research for years before realizing that law enforcement was relying on a limited form of DNA testing. He knew that better technology was available, but said it just wasn't being widely used out there.
Sam Smallcomb
It sounded like science fiction at the time. This way you could take decades old DNA, put it into a genealogy database, build a family tree for your suspect and then that takes you right to his door. That was pretty amazing.
David Muir
You start to think, wow, this is really an unused tool here for law enforcement.
David Mittleman
Yeah. It felt wrong that there were tools available and yet there was this piling up backlog of, of cases that were unsolved.
David Muir
So at one point you turn to Kristen and you say, I want to start my own lab.
Kristen Mittleman
His words were, let's build a forensic lab of the future. And my words were, what? Who's going to give you evidence?
David Muir
You thought from the very beginning, who's going to trust us with this 100%?
Courtney Swartz
I said, I don't think people will come.
Kristen Mittleman
And he said, well, I'm going to build it and we're going to see.
Sam Smallcomb
Within a year, he was solving cases almost every week. And the more cold cases they closed, the more publicity they got. And police departments around the world started sending them cases. It's just grown exponentially in terms of publicly announced solves, Othram is number one in the world. That includes homicides, rapes, unidentified bodies that they've been able to give names to.
David Muir
And Othram's reputation now for cracking these cold cases using DNA evidence and forensic genetic genealogy is what actually led Michigan detectives to send that 30 year old DNA to this lab. In the Kathy Swartz case, this DNA was how old when it got here.
David Mittleman
From that ping phone? It was decades old. And in spite of being so old, the DNA was still intact and usable for testing.
David Muir
She knew right away this was suitable. And this was just his DNA, the suspect's.
Brandon Best
You?
David Mittleman
Yeah. The DNA was a single unknown male contributor. It's a small sample, but in spite of that, there's anywhere from hundreds to thousands of cells worth of DNA.
David Muir
So if you touch David's hand, how much DNA, how many cells have you left there?
Kristen Mittleman
Hundreds. Hundreds of cells.
David Muir
Hundreds of cells on his hand. And sometimes you're dealing with 10, 15, even less from years ago and still able to solve the case.
David Mittleman
It's a very, very sensitive technology.
Brandon Best
In.
David Muir
This Kathy Swartz case. You've chemically labeled all the different parts of the DNA in this room right here and what do you do with it from there?
David Mittleman
It is now ready to actually be read. This particular DNA sequencer is one of the most powerful sequencers this year.
David Muir
With the green.
Brandon Best
Yes.
David Muir
Give me a comparison to what authorities used to have to deal with. What would the DNA sequence reveal versus what you can reveal with the DNA sequencing from this machine now.
Jeffrey Middleton
Sure.
David Mittleman
So for the last 30 years, people have used a different kind of DNA testing technology that can measure 20 data points in the DNA. This machine actually can read out the entire sequence. So whereas you might get 20 data points in the earlier versions of this technology, this machine could give you anywhere from 100,000 to a million data points.
David Muir
100,000 to a million.
David Mittleman
A hundred thousand to a million data points.
David Muir
So now that you have this sequencing that they just didn't have access to years ago in this particular case, for example, what do you then do with that?
David Mittleman
So with the data file that comes out that might have 100,000 to a million DNA markers, you can do a lot more, including genetic genealogy and that search for distant relatives.
David Muir
You're taking what in many cases is a very old DNA sample from these cold cases. You're expanding the DNA sequence, but you're also able to take that information now and put it up against vast public Data now because families and relatives and third cousins and fourth cousins have put all of this information out there. And it would seem that this might unlock cold cases everywhere.
Kristen Mittleman
Correct.
Sam Smallcomb
At that point, Othram's in house genealogy team takes over to build a family tree for the suspected killer of Kathy Swartz.
Kristen Mittleman
These types of crimes going unsolved have.
Courtney Swartz
A ripple effect across society.
Kristen Mittleman
Not just the victim and the family not having answers, but the law enforcement.
Courtney Swartz
That worked the case for decades, consumed by a case they can't solve.
David Muir
Finding those investigators and then gaining their trust is what Othram says has been critical to their success in helping to crack these cases in those early years. You have no background in law enforcement. Are you essentially making cold calls to police stations?
David Mittleman
I spent my time almost exclusively talking to law enforcement.
David Muir
You live in Texas and you know if you want to land a case in Texas, you got to get to the Texas Rangers. But how did you convince them that we've got a tool here?
David Mittleman
Well, the one that I've done the most work with is Ranger Brandon Best.
Sam Smallcomb
Brandon Best is almost out of central casting for a Texas Ranger. He's this imposing man with his white hat. When did David Middleman founded Othram? Nobody had heard of them. And when he best visited in 2019, he was really kind of taken aback.
Brandon Best
David walks in this room and it's to speak to David's confidence in that. He's wearing a T shirt that's about two sizes too small. He's wearing jeans that have holes in them. It looks like he hadn't slept in 14 days, his hair standing up. I have instant respect for him because I can tell this is a guy that doesn't give up.
Sam Smallcomb
Bass came away impressed. He heard about the opportunity to solve a cold case and he thought, let's team up.
David Mittleman
And he had one case in mind. They told me it was the most heinous thing that had ever happened that was unsolved in Beaumont.
David Muir
That other case, that young schoolteacher, 31 year old.
Brandon Best
Catherine Edwards, 911, what's your mercy get me?
David Muir
What was unique about this case?
David Mittleman
The victim was a schoolteacher, well liked by everyone. There was no sign of forced entry. So it's a very odd situation. It didn't add up.
Brandon Best
This is a crime of violence, a crime of passion, a crime of control.
David Muir
It gives you chills even today.
Kristen Mittleman
Even today? Yes, even today.
Brandon Best
Either it was someone that she knew or someone that presented themselves as an officer. It was almost like whispered in the hallways, it could be one of our own.
Sam Smallcomb
So on January 14, 1995, the Beaumont Police Department gets a 911 call from a man at a townhouse in West Beaumont.
Brandon Best
Oh. Oh, Jesus. 911, unless you're emergency, get me the police.
Sam Smallcomb
He had found his daughter in the second floor bathroom slumped over the tub.
Kristen Mittleman
Okay, ma', am, what's going on there?
Brandon Best
My daughter. Our daughter has been murdered. Okay, what happened? Ma'? Am? We came over here and found her. She's handcuffed. She's been tortured. Please. Okay, we're sending someone. Don't hang up. Okay, okay. Is there anyone else in the house? My husband is here with me. We found her.
Sam Smallcomb
That woman was Katherine Edwards, and she's a teacher at a local elementary school.
Brandon Best
She was supposed to have plans with her sister and family for lunch. When she didn't respond by phone call, they went by her house and found that her car was still there. Got inside the house with a kid.
Jeffrey Middleton
Her father said he grabbed her and pulled her over and rolled her over to look and see if there's anything he could do. He was crying hysterically.
Brandon Best
To listen to the emotion and those calls, you know, just gut wrenching. In my 30 plus years, I'd never heard anything like it.
Jeffrey Middleton
Dad covers her with a towel. Police show up. There's one officer by the name of Carmen Brown. She shows up first and she secures the crime scene.
David Muir
And that officer, Carmen Brown Apple says the memory of her entering Katherine Edwards townhouse has played over and over again in her mind for decades. You remember walking in and what you discovered?
Kristen Mittleman
I remember walking in and going up the stairs, looking first into the bedroom. That was very much in disarray.
David Muir
What did you find as far as the bedroom and the bathroom?
Kristen Mittleman
Bedroom. There was a. Looked like there had been some type of tussle in there. Things had been knocked around. Sheets were partially torn off. A portion of the bedpost had come off. And then walking into the bathroom and seeing her body on the floor.
David Muir
She'd been handcuffed?
Kristen Mittleman
That's correct. She had been handcuffed with her hands behind her back.
David Muir
When her mother said her name.
Kristen Mittleman
Yes.
David Muir
You thought, I know her.
Kristen Mittleman
I know her. I went to college with her. We were in sororities together. She was so full of life and so friendly and so nice that just always stuck with me. To come to the scene and then suddenly realize it was Mary Catherine. It just knocked me for a minute.
David Muir
It gives you chills even today.
Kristen Mittleman
Even today? Yes, even today.
Brandon Best
She is not your typical victim by any stretch of the circumstance. It was an extremely unusual Case.
Sam Smallcomb
Catherine and her twin sister Allison grew up in Beaumont. They're part of a close knit Presbyterian family. They both attended Forest Park High School and then Lamar University, which is in Beaumont. And they both became schoolteachers at the Beaumont Independent School District. Kathryn and her sister were extremely close.
Jeffrey Middleton
When you talk about Mary Kathryn and talk about Allison and look at them, I mean they are identical twins. You can't tell them apart. They both had students come up to each other in the grocery store thinking they were the other twin.
David Muir
Investigators learned that her sister Allison was likely the last person aside from the killer, obviously to see Catherine alive. Allison would tell detectives that her twin sister arrived at her house after work to pick up her beloved beagle, Maggie.
Jeffrey Middleton
She came by, visited with her sister, went home. From what we can tell, she had had a glass of wine and just kind of was relaxing and about to go to bed. And I think the last time she, she was heard from was about 8 o' clock that night.
Sam Smallcomb
One of the neighbors told police that he heard someone clomping down the stairs overnight on the night of January 13th.
Brandon Best
There was a 12 year old boy and his dad that were staying with some friends that were right next door to Katherine Edwards townhome. He heard somebody run down the stairs and then a door slam. And a little while later a car sped off with loud music.
Kristen Mittleman
Music.
Brandon Best
There were some other neighbors that heard some loud banging.
Jeffrey Middleton
Lasted for 60 to 90 seconds. And they said they never heard a scream. So they just figured that something else might have been going on. They had no idea that there was a murder taking place next door.
Sam Smallcomb
Crime scene investigators found that there was no sign of forced entry, which is significant because either miss that Katherine had kept her door unlocked or had potentially recognized her killer and let him in.
David Muir
Of course, in these cases it's standard procedure for investigators to look at those closest to the victim. And really from the beginning, her ex boyfriend is seen as a prime suspect. But critical evidence from the scene actually points in a different direction.
Brandon Best
The crime scene investigators at the time also collected a lot of evidence from the house. And one of those pieces of evidence being the bedspread.
Sam Smallcomb
Investigators found semen on Katherine's bedspread and from the rape kit.
Jeffrey Middleton
We've got some DNA here. Now we just got to match it.
David Muir
The DNA actually doesn't match her ex boyfriend and he's now cleared in the case. And there are no matches to the DNA in codis, which is the National Criminal Offender DNA database either.
Sam Smallcomb
Police were really stumped. They tried every avenue they could think of. But every avenue hit a dead end. One of their initial theories was that the killer had some sort of law enforcement background. The handcuffs were Smith and Wesson. That's a popular brand with law enforcement.
Jeffrey Middleton
They were trying everything they could think of. They really did. They went and tracked down sales of handcuffs in this area.
Sam Smallcomb
Area receipts, all members of the Beaumont Police Department were tested. There were no matches.
Brandon Best
It kind of sent a panic to the community. You know, if this can happen to somebody in a really quiet part of town, could it happen to them?
Jeffrey Middleton
Kind of thing went from a rumor to just spreading like wildfire throughout the community. Everybody wanted to know, was this a one time deal? Was this a serial killer?
David Muir
The case would go cold for decades. And obviously it's just one of hundreds of thousands of unsolved murders in this country. But then in 2022, investigators ranger Brandon Best and Beaumont Police Detective Aaron Llewellyn decided to take a fresh look at the case. At the time, Bess had just been connected with this new lab called Othram. And Detective Llewellyn knows that there's DNA that's actually available to test in this case.
Brandon Best
But when Brandon presented Othram to me right then and there, I'm like, let's make this happen. We believed that was gonna be our.
David Muir
Only hope, the last hope for answers. The DNA evidence from the murder of that elementary school teacher, Catherine Edwards is now headed to Othram for testing. Bloody fingerprint left on a phone and a footprint. And in the case of that Michigan mom, Kathy Swartz, what new lead is about to be uncovered right behind this glass? You'll see right here tonight how both, both cases are about to crack wide open, sending investigators across this country to find the killers they've been searching for for decades.
Jeffrey Middleton
The person that did it was in the 10,000 pages of police reports. You have all these puzzle pieces, but if they don't all fit together, you don't see the picture.
Brandon Best
I want you to think about the next words that come out of your mouth. Don't you think very far about that. We felt like we had a home run right then and there.
Courtney Swartz
And they said he was like a godly man down there.
Kristen Mittleman
I was like, wow, we're gonna get some answers.
David Muir
Tonight. Two horrible murders.
Kristen Mittleman
I just, just fell up. Awful.
David Muir
And now a survivor who lived to tell.
Kristen Mittleman
I was just like, I can't tell me. I'll never tell anybody what happened.
Brandon Best
What did your daughter do? He'd been murdered.
David Muir
It gives you chills even today, even.
Jeffrey Middleton
Today that someone had Written on her body, on the inside of her thigh, and said, I was here, but only.
David Muir
One way to solve them. After years of going cold, I honestly.
Todd Peters
Felt the genetic genealogy was our only chance.
David Muir
All these years later, they said, well, look at this and see if there's something you can do with it.
Jeffrey Middleton
It's his fingerprint, it's his bare bloody footprint and it's his DNA.
Courtney Swartz
It turned into a massacre.
Kristen Mittleman
The floor goes out from under you. It was, no way, this cannot be happening. He said, your sister's dead.
Brandon Best
Your sister, sister's dead. There's two people that know that story. You're one of them and she's the other and she can't talk.
Jeffrey Middleton
Without the DNA, this story doesn't matter.
David Muir
That the two of them were able to go back and look at that evidence.
Courtney Swartz
Yes.
David Muir
From when you were a nine month old baby.
Brandon Best
Yes.
David Muir
In the crib just a few feet from your mother.
Brandon Best
And there was a moment like, oh, this is our guy. For some families, you are the last hope, Sam.
David Muir
Courtney Swartz's childhood was clouded in mystery. She was the sole survivor. She was just a baby at the time. During a vicious attack that left her 19 year old mother, Kathy Swartz, strangled and stabbed to death right near her. Among the clues left behind at the scene, a single bloody fingerprint on Kathy's pink forever. It contained DNA of the possible killer. But of course, the question for decades who was the killer? For years you were haunted by that question.
Courtney Swartz
Yeah. Growing up, most kids, you know, they look at people and they don't have to think, is that the man that killed your mom? And everybody that I met, that's the first thing that would pop into my mind.
Todd Peters
This is the original file from 1988.
Brandon Best
When you have your files in so Cold Case, the killer's name, it's in there somewhere.
Todd Peters
The profilers really believed that whoever it was would return and return to her gravesite. And for years that was part of our initial officer a rookie training program was this is Kathy Schwartz's grave site. If you see somebody at that grave site, you need to stop and identify them because they could be a prime suspect in the murder.
David Muir
More than a thousand miles from Three Rivers, Michigan. We're right here on the Neches river in Beaumont, Texas, where another family, heartbroken for decades, the community wondering, do they too have a killer in their midst? After the brutal murder of a young elementary school teacher, Catherine Edwards. She was just 31. And detectives here wondering, would they ever have the tools to solve this case?
Brandon Best
You know that every Day that you don't solve that crime is a day that you're not going to be able to bring that perpetrator to justice.
Kristen Mittleman
This certainly is a scene that has always stayed with me.
David Muir
And you retired and when you left the force at that point, it had not been solved.
Kristen Mittleman
That's correct. Every now and then, someone would dust off the case file and start looking at it with fresh eyes. And I always thought, maybe this time something will spark and we'll catch whoever did this.
David Muir
It would turn out that spark, the one that would finally reignite the whole investigation into the murder of Katherine Edwards was actually coming thanks to a major leap forward in forensic technology.
Sam Smallcomb
In 2020, a courier drops off a package at Othram's office. And inside are a sample of the bedspread from Katherine Edwards apartment, a vial of DNA taken from the posthumous rape kit. Othram technicians take a look and they build a genetic profile of their suspect.
David Muir
Investigators now have a human profile that can actually be searched in public databases to try to find possible family members across this country. And to do that, you need a genealogist to connect the dots. And Beaumont Detective Aaron Llewellyn didn't have to look far for help.
Sam Smallcomb
Aaron Llewellyn knew one who would work the case for free, and that was his wife, Tina.
Brandon Best
I remember sitting at the table one night and getting really frustrated trying to map all this out. And she's like, let me help.
Kristen Mittleman
Actually, just move over. I got this.
Brandon Best
Tina doesn't ask.
Sam Smallcomb
Tina Llewellyn was a detective in the Beaumont Autocrimes Division, and she had an amateur interest in genealogy.
Brandon Best
I can remember dozing off one night and I wake up and she's got lines going here and lines going there.
David Muir
So now, along with the Middlemans from the Othram Forensic Laboratory, you've got two husband wife teams actually working the case of this elementary school teacher, Katherine Edwards. And soon, another critical partner joins the hunt.
Sam Smallcomb
When Tina Llewellyn is looking through the matches to their suspect. These are distant relatives of the suspected killer. She notices that a lot of them are enclustered in Cajun country in Louisiana. And the same contact name keeps popping up. This woman named Shara lapointe.
Kristen Mittleman
I was sitting at my desk one day and I got a phone call. He said, I'm Detective Aaron Llewellyn from the Beaumont Police Department. You're emailing is attached to one of the matches that we have to the person of interest.
David Muir
Cheryl lapointe just happens to be a professional genealogist with Experience working in criminal cases. She also has Cajun ancestry.
Kristen Mittleman
Cajuns back to the late 1700s. We were a small population who came to south Louisiana, and so they married their neighbors who was usually their relatives.
Sam Smallcomb
Also, Cajun ancestry is notoriously complicated and complex to perform genealogical work on.
Kristen Mittleman
I knew it was gonna be a challenge from the start. We spent hours and hours and hours on the phone talking to each other.
Brandon Best
Probably no less than five times a day.
David Muir
A friendship quickly forms as the two women spend the next three months building a family tree around the suspect's DNA using every every record they can find. A combination of Internet research and good old fashioned library archives.
Kristen Mittleman
A lot of newspaper articles. A lot of newspaper articles. Obituaries, census records. I remember I got to a couple in Beaumont and there are yearbook records of two sons that that couple had. And the first one we came across, he was the right age. He went to the same high school with our victim.
Jeffrey Middleton
Aaron goes and does research and finds out that he had a criminal history from here. And it was a prior sexual assault that had occurred in 1981.
Brandon Best
And there was a moment like, oh, this is our guy.
David Muir
And the details of that assault set off alarm bells for detectives.
Brandon Best
There were a lot of similarities. In that case that mimicked Katharine Edwards case, the victim's hands were bound behind her back. She was sexually assaulted. We felt like we had a home run right then and there.
David Muir
Suddenly they realized that this suspect had a second victim. The difference this time, the victim survived and lived to tell.
Kristen Mittleman
He started telling me that he was training to become a policeman and stuff. He was like, I'll just take you home. I don't know why, but I believed him. This episode is brought to you by JCPenney. Yes, JCPenney. And if you've been there recently, you know it's the place to go for jaw dropping looks at brag worthy price. They've got something special for every style and budget. Not to mention rewards and deals that make finding those hidden gems even sweeter. If you already shop JCPenney, you're already.
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Kristen Mittleman
I was 19. There was a new country western bar that opened up. I really didn't want to go that night, but I'd promised the other girls that I would go. I decided I wanted to leave. I was dead. I wanted to get home. The parking lot was mud and my car was stuck in the mud. I just thought, I'll just walk to the gas station and call my mom.
David Muir
She says a man offered her a ride home.
Kristen Mittleman
He said his brother's name and then he said where he went to high school. And then he said, do you go to Forest Park? And I was like, yeah. And then he started telling me that he was training to become a policeman and stuff. And so then he was like, I'll just take you home. And I don't know why, but, you know, I just, I believed him.
David Muir
She realized very quickly that that man wasn't driving in the direction of her home.
Kristen Mittleman
He started off being very nice. Next thing I know, we're at this field. And then his whole demure changed.
Sam Smallcomb
He drove her to a nearby park, threatened her with a knife, tied her hands behind her back and raped her in the backseat of the car. Then he dropped her off at her.
Kristen Mittleman
I just, just felt awful and shameful. And I was like, I was just like, I can't tell any. I'll never tell anybody what happened. I don't know, I was kind of like, I don't know if anybody would believe me. You know, is it my fault? Was it my fault?
David Muir
Paula said she summoned the courage about a week later to tell police what had happened. They would soon tell her that they identified the man who attacked her. And it turns out he wasn't a police trainee. He was a 21 year old salesman in Beaumont.
Sam Smallcomb
He said, yeah, I did it. I just got carried away.
Jeffrey Middleton
She said that the prosecutor talked to her, said, you know, this is his first offense. We want to plead him to an aggravated assault. She didn't understand what that meant other than he was pleading to a felony and for assaulting her. And so she agreed to the plea bargain agreement.
Kristen Mittleman
I think today they take it more serious than they did back then. I wanted him to be punished. I think I was just pushing everything down and just trying to focus on with life.
Brandon Best
Hey. Good.
Jeffrey Middleton
How are you?
Brandon Best
Ranger Bess Brandon. Yes, sir. Pleasure. Yes, sir.
David Muir
So when you looked at what had happened in 1981 with this sexual assault, you thought, there's a lot here that seems awfully close to the Katherine Edwards case.
Brandon Best
I did.
David Muir
It turns out that the man who pleaded guilty in that 1981 case is a man by the name of Clayton Forman. Now, this is the same name that turned up in Tina and Chera's genealogy hunt. He was one of two brothers from the family tree that they actually put together. And you might be wondering why his name never surfaced before. You have to remember that this case was back in 1981, and DNA collection wasn't even a thing by law enforcement. It was still a decade away.
Sam Smallcomb
This is how he eluded detectives at the time. He essentially got away scot free.
David Muir
As investigators get closer to solving this mystery, they begin to learn more about Clayton Foreman's background. And in a twist in this case, one of the things they learned is that Clayton Foreman, the suspect, actually went to the same school as Catherine Edwards, the woman who was killed. In fact, they probably walked down the same hallways here at school. And there was something else. Catherine Edwards was actually friends with the suspect's first wife. In fact, Catherine Edwards was a bridesmaid at their wedding.
Sam Smallcomb
Investigators figure out that Clayton Foreman is working in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and he's working as a rideshare driver.
Jeffrey Middleton
We've got a suspect. Now we've got to make sure that's the right guy. So they go, they pull the trash can, they get some plastic silverware from takeout and some other things from the trash can.
David Muir
So you tell the FBI what you found, and they gather some trash at the suspect's home in Ohio.
Brandon Best
Correct. They shipped that down here to me. And then once I went through it, I coordinated with our lab here in Texas to see what items would be best to test, and they compared it to the evidence that we had, and we got the call. This is our guy. This is a. This is a match. Of course, we're chomping at the bit to get there to Ohio.
David Muir
So he'd been told that one of his Uber customers had had something taken and that he needed to come down. Maybe you guys could ask him a few questions about it. That's not what you were going to ask him?
Brandon Best
No, no, not at all. What we're here about is we're cold case investigators. Do you Want that shock and awe factor. You want him to walk in the room. You want him to see a guy with a cowboy hat on, and he knows that this is not someone from Ohio. We're asking you to visit with us about a crime that we're investigating, okay? You don't have to talk to us at all. He thought we were there. Just following up on an old case. Like, hey, these guys, they don't have anything. They're just asking me all these questions in case they do one day. I don't think he had any idea that we. We had his DNA. So the crime that we're looking at is the murder of Mary Katherine Edwards. She was murdered in 1995. She and her sister Allison were actually in your Wedding, right, in 1982. Were you aware of the crime even? No. You didn't know that Katherine Edwards was murdered? No, sir. Did not. Wedding night only would have been the only time you seen her, probably. So. Okay. Never obviously had sex with her? No. Never? Never. Did you ever go in her house at all? Any house that she ever lived in? No. Clay, I'm gonna level with you, okay, Right here and now. And I want you to hear me real close. All right? So what I'm gonna tell you right now is your DNA was on Katherine's bed and was inside Catherine. Okay? I mean, I don't know how it got there, but per se, it was there. There's only one way for it to get there, okay? And that's by you putting it there. Okay? There's two people that know that story. You're one of them, and she's the other, and she can't talk. Mm. What I ask you is now to be honest with us completely and tell us, how did that happen? Am I gonna say anything? Somebody need an attorney? Now, I see you probably need one or you do need one. I need an attorney. After he makes it outside, you know, that's when we executed the arrest warrant and arrested him.
David Muir
You showed up with the handcuffs that he used on Katherine Edwards.
Brandon Best
We did. And got to put him on him after we got through interviewing him.
David Muir
Did he know that those were the handcuffs he used?
Brandon Best
He was told.
David Muir
New developments tonight on the murder of a beloved Boma teacher. So, finally, 36 years after Katherine Edwards murder and arrest, the team can now return to Texas to prepare for trial. And in South Carolina, another team of investigators, they're now chasing a promising lead in their case because of this new technology, the murder of Michigan mom Kathy Swartz, whose daughter has gone so many years without answers. At what point did hope return for you?
Courtney Swartz
I got a phone call from Sam Smallcomb, and he said, we may have the guy that killed your mom.
David Muir
How can we help you? Investigators working the cold case murder of Kathy Swartz, the young Michigan mother who was murdered, her baby right nearby. They had sent off the perpetrator's DNA taken from her pink phone to that lab in Texas. Othram. So after three decades with no arrests in this case, OTHRAM actually uses their cutting edge technology to build a comprehensive DNA sequence of. Of who the perpetrator is. So now that you have this sequencing that they just didn't have access to years ago, what do you then do with that?
David Mittleman
We could use that profile to search a database of people. And in doing this, we can then begin to figure out how these people that are near relatives are arranged on a family tree. And if we can do that, then we can begin to ask where the person that we're looking to identify might fit on the tree.
David Muir
In going down the family tree, you find Find that there is actually a family that lives in Three Rivers, Michigan. A mother and father with four sons.
Sam Smallcomb
Yes, that's correct.
Todd Peters
We got the report back, and they believed it was a family that had lived in Three Rivers. The DNA was male, so this narrowed it down to four brothers. The youngest brother, Barry, and then there was. The oldest was Sunny Waters, then John Waters, and then Robert Waters. We were very excited because now we have leads to run off from. We're very quickly being able to eliminate Barry because his DNA that was in.
David Muir
Codis, and they're able to rule him out, so they take him right off the list. Detectives then track down two more of the Waters brothers, who both quickly agree to turn over their DNA.
Todd Peters
1, 2, 3, 4.
David Muir
And with that DNA, they're able to eliminate them as well. Which just left Robert Waters.
Todd Peters
Robert Waters was married, had a couple of children, and had been living in Beaufort, South Carolina for quite some time. He was a local business owner and had a plumbing business.
David Muir
And from what detectives can tell from looking at his wife's Facebook page, Robert Waters appears to be a happily married family man.
Brandon Best
All right.
Jeffrey Middleton
Hey, how you doing?
Brandon Best
Good morning.
David Muir
Hey, Robert, how you doing?
Brandon Best
Good. How are you? How can we help you?
Todd Peters
I'm Sam Smokem from Three Rivers pd. This is Todd Peters from Michigan State Police.
Jeffrey Middleton
Nice to meet you.
Sam Smallcomb
Nice to meet you.
Todd Peters
Can we talk for just a couple minutes?
Brandon Best
Too much.
Jeffrey Middleton
He seemed like the guy next door that would mow your lawn for you if you were going to be out of town for a week.
Brandon Best
So I'm helping Sam. And we reopened this case from. From Three Rivers, from way back in the day. Going back through and. And getting interviews and just clearing everything down. Okay. So we were wondering if you wouldn't. If you'd have time to come down to the TV and talk with us down there. Yeah. Okay. Somebody comes into your. Knocks on your door. Investigators from another state and asks you to come down to a department and talk.
David Muir
You're probably going to ask why.
Brandon Best
Never asks why. And agrees to drive himself down and meet us there. So we'll just expect you in a couple minutes and we'll meet you down.
Jeffrey Middleton
That's fine.
David Muir
All right.
Brandon Best
Thank you, sir.
David Muir
After initially not showing at the police station, detectives call Waters. He's informed that they have a warrant for his prints and his DNA. And later that day he actually comes in.
Brandon Best
But what I'm probably gonna do is do the three. And we had to just focus on getting the fingerprints and the DNA. Yeah, I don't have a seat.
Todd Peters
And one of the issues we had run into is the Beaufort Police Department did not have the fingerprint live scan machine. So we had to use the traditional ink and paper.
Brandon Best
Hang on for just a second. I gotta take a call real quick here. Yes, sir. Hey, sorry about you. We're struggling with this print here.
David Muir
Unfortunately, at that police station, they're having trouble actually getting a clean print from Waters.
Brandon Best
Wanna come get your fingers dirty again? We're gonna try to do it on just card stock. Okay.
Todd Peters
So we rolled them a second time, sent those back.
Brandon Best
Never gets upset about it. Never gets worked up about the time. Okay. We're gonna go flat down.
Todd Peters
He still just willingly, I guess, hung out with us.
David Muir
So you've got the detectives now waiting for a definitive answer from the lab in Michigan. So they spend the next five hours actually making small talk with Robert Waters.
Jeffrey Middleton
If you like seafood.
Brandon Best
Yep, I do.
Jeffrey Middleton
You will like that place.
Brandon Best
We talked about our families, his family, plumbing and remodeling houses. You would never guess by looking at that guy that he was concerned about why he was there or the outcome of it. All right. Okay.
Todd Peters
I just wanted to tell you we did submit the print that we took from you earlier. It did match to the one at the crime scene. So at this time, you are under arrest for the murder of Kathy Schwartz.
Brandon Best
Okay. Okay.
Todd Peters
It really surprised me. He did not really react. I. I feel like he knew when we showed up that morning that the game was up.
David Muir
Do you remember when you learned that the prints were a match?
Courtney Swartz
There was just so many emotions and everything going on that I was just overwhelmed and so excited because finally they had him.
David Muir
So after decades, you have your answer?
Courtney Swartz
Yes.
Kristen Mittleman
53 year old Robert Waters, a former Three Rivers resident, now a plumber.
Brandon Best
Husband, father and accused killer.
Kristen Mittleman
I didn't recognize his name. Didn't sound familiar to me at all.
David Muir
But investigators always believe that Kathy Swartz must have known her killer in some way. You'll remember there was no forced entry. And they finally discover the connection when they go back to speak to Kathy, Kathy's onetime fiance, Mike Warner.
Todd Peters
Well, let me ask you the obvious question. What about Rob Waters?
Brandon Best
He came there one time.
Todd Peters
He came there one time.
Brandon Best
One time.
Todd Peters
Okay, do you remember like was that close to December? That was.
Brandon Best
I think so.
Todd Peters
He knew Robbie Waters had visited the apartment about a month before the murder.
Brandon Best
We hadn't seen him since grade school. Yeah.
Todd Peters
Okay, so he just somehow figured out that you guys were living in Riverside and showed up that one time?
Brandon Best
Yeah.
Courtney Swartz
I honestly think she knew him then, obviously because he was friends with Mike and he was in town and tried to come see my mom and she wasn't having it.
David Muir
He's waiting to be extradited to St. Joseph County.
Kristen Mittleman
It really was, you know, like, wow. We're going to get some answers. Answers. We're gonna find some things out.
David Muir
But before his day in court could actually come, the suspect, Robert Waters does something that shocks everyone.
Kristen Mittleman
No way. This cannot be happening.
Brandon Best
If you're thirsting for asphalt, smelting your work boots, tape measure has anger issues.
David Muir
Nail guns, talking smack again and hard.
Brandon Best
Hat baked onto head level refreshment. We definitely have that.
David Muir
Cool off with Gatorade.
Brandon Best
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Kristen Mittleman
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Brandon Best
Earn skills in weeks, now years. Visit Phoenix edu.
Kristen Mittleman
A major breakthrough in a cold case murder out of Three Rivers.
David Muir
Investigators say they have finally arrested a suspect. His name is 53 year old Robert Waters. Those are tight.
Todd Peters
No, the plans were already in place. He had waived extradition, so he knew that he was going to be brought back to Michigan.
David Muir
They go down to South Carolina and they discover that they this man had been living a full life.
Courtney Swartz
Yeah.
David Muir
Married, children, a job, a good job, a good life.
Courtney Swartz
And they said he was like a godly man down there. To that you say no, they don't know the real man.
David Muir
But after evading law enforcement for decades, Robert Waters never makes it back to Michigan.
Brandon Best
At like 6:30 in the morning, I received a call from an investigator from Beaufort. And she had explained that she had just come from the jail and that Robert Waters had hung himself in his cell.
Kristen Mittleman
I'm like, no way. This cannot be happening again. Like a disbelief, you know, like, why? How could this happen?
Todd Peters
He had some material that they'd given him in the jail, and it was some devotionals, and the parts that he had ripped out talked about forgiveness and asking for forgiveness.
Brandon Best
To me, it says that you're guilty. I mean, no one is gonna do that in that situation if they're innocent.
David Muir
You feel robbed that you did not get the opportunity to see him face to face.
Courtney Swartz
Yes. I just wanted him to feel my presence in the room.
David Muir
What would you have said to him in court?
Courtney Swartz
I don't think I would have said anything. I just think I would have walked in and my presence is enough words for him.
David Muir
He would have seen that baby.
Courtney Swartz
Yeah.
David Muir
That he left there in that crib all day.
Courtney Swartz
And probably my mom, because I look like her.
Kristen Mittleman
They say he's a coward to take her away from all of us in the manner that he did. And then he got to go live his life. You're not gonna give us any answers. I mean, he's just a coward.
David Muir
But remember, there are two cases here that have been unlocked by this new technology. And back in Beaumont, Texas, Katherine Edwards. Loved ones are determined to see the suspect in that case, Clayton Foreman, the man charged with murdering her, face a jury.
Sam Smallcomb
Clayton Forman goes on trial in March of 2024 in Beaumont. He is charged with capital murder.
David Muir
Clayton Bernard Foreman, how do you plead to the indictment? Guilty or not guilty?
Jeffrey Middleton
Not guilty.
Brandon Best
There were family there, there were friends there. There were former students of Catherine's that were there to see that justice was going to be served.
David Muir
Prosecutors begin by playing that911. One call Katherine's parents made for the jury.
Brandon Best
What's going on? My daughter murdered.
Jeffrey Middleton
That 911 tape was very impactful. To start the trial off with that really gets you involved and to know that something horrible happened.
David Muir
You know, Catherine's parents did not live to see the man accused of killing their daughter arrested. So this is left now to the twin sister, Allison, to tell jurors about her sister.
Brandon Best
Are you related to Mary Kathryn Atworth?
Kristen Mittleman
Yes, she was.
Sam Smallcomb
My twin sister Alison is now 60 years old, and she offered really powerful testimony about growing up with Katherine she.
Kristen Mittleman
Just was always very nurturing and loving to people and if anyone had a problem, they would come to her and she would talk to strangers and make friends with people and compliment people and just was an amazing person.
Sam Smallcomb
Allison recalls the afternoon where her sister's body was discovered. Katherine just never showed up to this lunch. So eventually her father, Lum, agreed to go check on her.
Kristen Mittleman
And my dad answered the phone and he was frantic and be said, your sister's dead, your sister's dead.
Jeffrey Middleton
It was just heartbreaking to see. I mean, her twin, identical twin, is what she would have looked like today if she was alive. And there she is up on the stand testifying. And the emotion and the love and the hurt, all of it came out and was so impactful with the jury.
Sam Smallcomb
Allison said when Kathryn died, she thought her parents died a little bit that day too.
Kristen Mittleman
It was horrible. They were never the same. But we decided as a family after that happened that we were gonna not let what happened kill us too. And that we were gonna live to honor her. And that's what we always did after that.
David Muir
And in a heart crushing moment, Alison shares with the jury how she honored her sister after her death.
Brandon Best
Four years later, I had a daughter.
Kristen Mittleman
And her name is Katherine. Katherine after my sister. And she never got to know her. My oldest was 9 months old and she was her godmother and she never got to know her either.
Brandon Best
You can know the case inside out, but until you see somebody testify and see the raw emotion that's going on, that was raw, raw emotion that they relived on the stand.
David Muir
Excuse, ma'.
Brandon Best
Am.
Kristen Mittleman
Thank you.
David Muir
Prosecution's next witness is about to detail the surprising connection between Katherine Edwards and Clayton Foreman. And you got married to a person.
Jeffrey Middleton
By the name of Clayton Foreman?
Kristen Mittleman
Yes.
David Muir
What she's about to tell the jury about his reaction to Katherine's death, it dumbfounded me. Jurors in the trial of Clayton Foreman, the man accused of killing that schoolteacher, Katherine Edwards, are now hearing about this investigation that took nearly 30 years. And all of it now culminating with this cutting edge DNA testing done by that Texas lab. Othram, please have a seat.
David Mittleman
I was very eager to get to the courtroom. I work at othram. We'll do the testing and it will result in the building of a DNA profile to generate new leads in the investigation. There's one thing to solve a case and there's another to be able to defend how that work was done, allow it to be interrogated openly and critiqued. We want to see at least 50% of the markers. And you can see that in actuality, we had. It looks like 87%. So that's far in excess of what is necessary to produce a workable profile.
Jeffrey Middleton
Without the DNA, the story doesn't matter. That's that one puzzle piece that puts it all together.
David Muir
So prosecutors want the jurors now to hear from the woman who can actually detail the connection between that schoolteacher, Katherine Edwards, and Clayton Forman. She was married to him.
Kristen Mittleman
My name's Diana Coe.
David Muir
And remember, Catherine Edwards and her twin sister were actually bridesmaids at the wedding.
Jeffrey Middleton
Were they friends of yours in high school?
Kristen Mittleman
Yes.
David Muir
She also testified that while she was married to Foreman, she actually discovered something unnerving in his car.
Jeffrey Middleton
We had found a briefcase in the.
David Muir
Trunk of the defendant's car.
Brandon Best
Is that correct?
Kristen Mittleman
That's correct.
David Muir
All right, what was inside the briefcase?
Kristen Mittleman
There was a gun, a set of handcuffs, and some horrible pornographic material.
Brandon Best
Okay.
Jeffrey Middleton
Regarding the gun, was there any reason.
Brandon Best
For him to have a gun that.
David Muir
You knew of at the time?
Jeffrey Middleton
No reason.
Brandon Best
I mean, is there any reason that.
Jeffrey Middleton
You knew of that he would have a pair of handcuffs in the back of his trunk?
Kristen Mittleman
No.
David Muir
Did you ever talk to him about that?
Kristen Mittleman
No, I didn't know what he would say. I didn't know what he would do.
David Muir
And later, when questioned by the defense, Diana said she never saw the briefcase again. She also recalled an odd conversation that she'd actually had with her ex husband about Catherine and her twin sister.
Kristen Mittleman
He had told me that in high school, he would see them in the hall, and he always thought they were so cute because they were twins, and he felt as though he wanted to make sure he protected them.
David Muir
After 11 years of marriage, Diana and Foreman divorced, but they continue to stay in touch. And she tells jurors how two years later, in 1995, she actually called her ex husband after finding out that Katherine had been murdered. Was that very upsetting to you?
Kristen Mittleman
Yes.
Jeffrey Middleton
When you told him, how did he react?
Kristen Mittleman
He didn't. It was very shocking to me. He just. It had, like, no feeling whatsoever. And just basically was like, oh, really? And it dumbfounded me.
David Muir
Excuse me.
Brandon Best
Thank you.
David Muir
And there was one more witness Jurors would hear from Paula Ramsey, foreman's victim from 1981. It had been decades since Paula had even heard the name of the man who assaulted her.
Kristen Mittleman
It was a Friday, and I was at work. My phone rang, and it said, beaumont police. This emotion came over me, and I was like, what, is someone messing with me?
David Muir
And on the other end of the line was detective Lew Allen.
Kristen Mittleman
He said he's a suspect in a murder. And that's when he started telling me about the DNA. And he said, it is a cold case murder. And I was like, you don't even have to ask. I will go, I will testify. We hung up. I just, I just broke down. I mean, you just go back to being that, that girl again where that.
Courtney Swartz
Fear and.
Kristen Mittleman
All of it just kind of consumes you again.
David Muir
And so suddenly, all these years later, in a courtroom full of strangers, Paula is telling her story about how she was assaulted by Foreman.
Jeffrey Middleton
Did he do something with your hands?
Courtney Swartz
He tied them in the back behind.
Jeffrey Middleton
He took your hands, put them behind you into security with an object. Do you believe that object may have been a belt?
David Muir
Yes. Did he threaten to cut your throat if you didn't do what he wanted?
Kristen Mittleman
Yes. I just kind of blocked out everything else and just focused on the questions.
Jeffrey Middleton
Did he say something that you found odd concerning what he had just done to you?
Kristen Mittleman
Yes.
Brandon Best
What was that?
Kristen Mittleman
When I was getting out of the car, he said, stop crying. I'm sorry. I hope I didn't hurt you. You have to say these things out loud. And then knowing that he's. He's sitting right over there and just being in the same room and. And that was hard.
Jeffrey Middleton
She relived it on that stand and it was amazing to watch her, how brave she was to do that.
Brandon Best
You came here today to tell the.
David Muir
Story what happened to you 42, 43 years ago, right?
Kristen Mittleman
Yes.
Sam Smallcomb
Who did you do that for?
Kristen Mittleman
Katherine. I wanted to see justice done for her.
David Muir
And in the end, Clayton Forman's defense, they wouldn't call any witnesses, but they did deliver a closing statement.
Jeffrey Middleton
You ordinary citizens get to decide whether.
Brandon Best
Or not on the day in question.
Jeffrey Middleton
January 14th of 1995, Clayton committed the offense of capital murder. He may not like it, what he did back in 81, that doesn't make him hurt her.
David Muir
Does it make him that he went.
Brandon Best
Out and killed somebody?
Sam Smallcomb
The case was very one sided and the prosecution had all the witnesses, had all the evidence. There was very little the defense could do.
Kristen Mittleman
The verdict is in.
David Muir
29 years of waiting came down to seven days of testimony and ultimately 52 minutes of deliberation.
Brandon Best
I'll tell you that anytime I've had a jury trial, I am scared to death when they're walking back in that room. That is the most tense moment ever for me.
David Muir
We the jury find the defendant guilty of the offense of capital murder.
Sam Smallcomb
It took police nearly 30 years to bring Clayton Forman to trial. For the murder of Kathryn Edwards. It took the jury less than an hour to convict him. It was very fast. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Kristen Mittleman
It was just really. I was thankful that I did it. Thankful that it did help. It did help. Putting him away.
David Muir
It was an extraordinary thing to have closure in that courtroom for that young school teacher and that other case, the mother who was brutally murdered, her baby just a few feet away. Now she's about to meet the couple who unlocked this case. As we stand here today, all these years later, it's so peaceful and quiet here. It's hard to imagine what played out behind us.
Kristen Mittleman
It is. Thankfully, the detectives worked very, very hard on this and never gave up. Never gave up. And they solved it. Detective Lewellyn called me and he said, hey, Carmen, you remember how you said you always wanted that case solved before you retired? Well, I know you've retired, but I think we got him. And he did.
David Muir
I can see the satisfaction on your face. Justice after all these years.
Kristen Mittleman
After all these years. Absolutely.
David Muir
Justice, finally, for that elementary school teacher, Katherine Edwards. And in the second case, justice as well for Kathy Swartz's daughter, Courtney. Hi, Courtney.
Courtney Swartz
Hello.
Kristen Mittleman
Hi.
David Muir
So these are the two who helped solve the case.
Kristen Mittleman
Kristen, hug you. I'm gonna hug you.
David Muir
Just the idea, though, that the two of them were able to go back and look at that evidence and solve it all these years later.
Courtney Swartz
I'm. I can't even. I don't even have no words.
Kristen Mittleman
You don't need words. I'm glad you have answers.
Courtney Swartz
Thank you.
Brandon Best
It's unbelievable, just in my career to see, like, when I started in 97 to where we're at today, you have these cases that are literally going nowhere. You give them this DNA sample, and the next thing you know, you know who your suspect is.
David Muir
Do you think that there are cases like this all over the country right now just waiting to be solved with this new technology?
Brandon Best
Absolutely. All over the country and all over the world. But finding every case, I think would be the goal. Every one, every sexual assault, every homicide, every one of them. We need to find those cases, and we need to get them submitted and worked.
David Muir
And that means answers, finally, for thousands of families. Sure.
Brandon Best
Absolutely.
David Mittleman
There are tens of thousands of little tubes of DNA in crime labs across this country, and all of them have answers.
Kristen Mittleman
I think we're going to live in.
Courtney Swartz
A world in this lifetime and where.
Kristen Mittleman
There are no unidentified victims, victims that are named voiceless, where perpetrators are caught the first time they commit a crime.
David Muir
For some families, you are the last hope for many.
Kristen Mittleman
I don't believe in closure when you've gone through something as horrible as one of these violent crimes. But I do believe that truth allows you to turn the page. Okay.
Courtney Swartz
I have been living with this for 36 years. And these people, they took their time. They solved this case with DNA so I can close this book and open up my own book with my own kids. And that's. There's no words for that.
David Muir
And we should know that that lab, those DNA decoders, Kristen and David Mittleman Othram, they recently announced their 455th DNA match. Deborah they are solving these cases.
Kristen Mittleman
And how incredible. DAVID Katherine Edwards killer Clayton Foreman will be eligible for parole in 30 years. He'll be in his 90s. He's appealing his conviction. That's our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Deborah Roberts.
David Muir
And I'm David Muir. From all of us here at 2020 at ABC News, good night.
Kristen Mittleman
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David Muir
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Kristen Mittleman
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David Muir
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Original air date: August 23, 2025
Host: ABC News
Main Theme:
This episode of 20/20, "The Code Breakers," explores two chilling cold cases involving the brutal murders of young women whose killers evaded justice for decades. The episode focuses on how technological leaps in forensic DNA analysis and genealogical sleuthing ultimately unmasked the perpetrators, providing long-sought answers and a measure of justice for the victims’ families.
Background:
Emotional Toll:
Early Investigation and Frustrations:
Background:
Family & Community Impact:
| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote / Moment | |-----------|---------|----------------| | 03:31 | Sam Smallcomb | “He gets home at 3, 3:30, and he immediately notices something is wrong.” | | 41:59 | Courtney Swartz | “That's the first thing that would pop into my mind... is that the man that killed your mom?” | | 27:12 | David Mittleman | “This machine actually can read out the entire sequence...100,000 to a million data points.” | | 67:09 | Courtney Swartz | “I just wanted him to feel my presence in the room.” | | 78:16 | David Muir | “29 years of waiting came down to seven days of testimony and ultimately 52 minutes of deliberation.” | | 80:58 | David Mittleman | “There are tens of thousands of little tubes of DNA in crime labs across this country, and all of them have answers.” |
This episode not only tells the stories of two long-unsolved murders and the people who suffered through decades of uncertainty but also demonstrates the transformational effect of forensic technology in serving justice, restoring agency, and offering survivors the chance to move forward.
“I don't believe in closure... But I do believe that truth allows you to turn the page.” — Kristen Mittleman [81:26]
Note: All advertisements and non-editorial material were omitted for clarity and focus.