S1:EP 5 - What Remains

Summary

America's Crime Lab Season 1, Episode 5: "What Remains" Release Date: August 6, 2025

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Introduction

In the gripping fifth episode of America's Crime Lab, titled "What Remains," hosts from iHeartPodcasts and Kaleidoscope delve into a haunting cold case from Ogden, Utah. This episode illuminates the silent epidemic of unidentified human remains (UHRs) and showcases how advanced DNA technology from Othram reignites hope for resolution and closure for families left in the dark for decades.

The 1992 Case: Discovery and Initial Investigation

The episode begins by painting a vivid picture of Ogden, Utah—a picturesque town with a rich history reminiscent of old Westerns. In April 1992, firefighters respond to what appears to be a routine field fire adjacent to a highway, gas station, and truck stop. However, they quickly realize the blaze centers around an abandoned boat engulfed in flames.

[04:34] Aylin Lancelosser: "It's springtime April, and firefighters are called to a fire in a field in Ogden, Utah, which is about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City."

Detective Ty Hebden from the Weber County Sheriff's Office recounts the initial chaos upon discovering a burned body inside the boat.

[06:40] Detective Ty Hebden: "Initially, it was just a grass fire or a field fire that then as they got there and saw that it was a boat, and then that's when they notice that there's actually a burned body within the fire itself."

The victim was determined to be a male, approximately six feet tall and aged between 30 and 45, who suffered smoke inhalation, indicating he was alive during the fire. Despite basic DNA testing and extensive searches through missing persons databases like NAMUS, the victim remained unidentified, and the case quickly went cold.

[09:28] Detective Ty Hebden: "They were able to determine that he did have some smoke inhalation. They were able to see that in his lungs to show that he would have been alive at the time of the fire based on the fact that he was breathing in smoke."

Cold Case Reopens: New Efforts and Collaboration

Fast forward to 2024, the Weber County Sheriff's Office establishes its first cold case unit. Detective Hebden reviews twenty stagnant cases, with the 1992 boat discovery catching his attention due to its lingering mysteries: the unidentified remains and the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death.

[11:17] Detective Ty Hebden: "I definitely, definitely always kept homicide there on my mind as a strong possibility."

Recognizing the need for advanced forensic analysis, Detective Hebden reaches out to Steve Ocam, an investigator with the Utah State Bureau of Investigations, known for his expertise in cold cases and sex crimes.

[17:53] Steve Ocam: "We got to solve this case for these guys. So, yeah, let's collaborate and see what we can do."

Othram’s DNA Breakthrough

With preserved evidence from the original investigation—vials of the victim's blood and a sample of pubic hair—Detective Hebden engages Othram, a leading laboratory specializing in forensic DNA analysis, to re-examine these samples. Despite the body's extensive burns, these preserved specimens provide a rare opportunity for identification.

[12:34] Detective Ty Hebden: "But then we actually had the vials of his blood that were collected by the medical examiner's office. We still had them, as well as a bag with the pubic hair."

Approximately six weeks later, Othram delivers groundbreaking news: the victim is identified as Kevin Capps.

[24:44] Host: "And about six weeks later, he hears back from Othram with the name Kevin Capps."

Detective Hebden receives a comprehensive genetic report from Othram, tracing Kevin's lineage and confirming the identification through a solid genetic match.

[24:51] Detective Ty Hebden: "They gave me, like, family, relatives, people that were still alive. It was a pretty cool report that they gave just of tracing down that family tree of this relative and this relative, and he's got all of this genetic makeup that brings it back to a pretty solid match that it was him."

Reconnecting with the Capps Family

The identification opens a new chapter in the investigation—reaching out to Kevin Capps' surviving family members. Detective Hebden contacts Chelsea Laro, Kevin's daughter, who was only four years old when her father disappeared.

[32:53] Aylin Lancelosser: "She was the least likely suspect... she would probably be the one kind of questioning the most of what happened."

Chelsea recounts the emotional turmoil of growing up without her father, the constant hope her sister held onto sightings of him, and the enduring impact of his absence.

[35:55] Detective Ty Hebden: "I did always wonder what it would be like to have a dad in my life... So for me, it was really hard not having him around... a big weight off my shoulders."

The identification brings immense relief but also unearths more unanswered questions about how Kevin ended up burned on a boat in a remote field.

Emotional Closure and Ongoing Investigation

While the identification of Kevin Capps brings closure to his immediate family, the circumstances of his death remain shrouded in mystery. Detective Hebden emphasizes the challenges in determining whether Kevin's death was accidental or homicidal, given the limited evidence available due to the fire's destructive nature.

[39:06] Aylin Lancelosser: "So it is still an open investigation... the case up even more."

Detective Hebden acknowledges that while major strides have been made in identifying the victim, uncovering the truth behind his death is an ongoing pursuit.

[39:13] Detective Ty Hebden: "One of the things with dealing with a body that's burned up to that extent is it makes it very difficult for us to be able to determine if there were other injuries."

Conclusion and Teaser for Next Episode

The episode concludes with a poignant reflection on the power of modern forensic science to resolve decades-old mysteries and the profound impact such resolutions have on the families involved. As Detective Hebden and Steve Ocam continue to unravel the complexities surrounding Kevin Capps' death, listeners are left anticipating further developments in this compelling case.

[40:32] Chelsea Laro: "Next time on America's Crime Lab takes..."

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Notable Quotes:

• Detective Ty Hebden [06:40]: "Initially, it was just a grass fire or a field fire... that's when they notice that there's actually a burned body within the fire itself."

• Steve Ocam [17:53]: "We got to solve this case for these guys. So, yeah, let's collaborate and see what we can do."

• Detective Ty Hebden [24:51]: "He still has family here in Utah... what hit me hard was realizing that he also had a daughter."

• Chelsea Laro [36:30]: "I did always wonder what it would be like to have a dad in my life... So for me, it was really hard not having him around."

Key Takeaways

• Unidentified Remains: Thousands of unidentified bodies linger in medical examiner's offices, awaiting identification that can bring closure to families and communities.

• Advances in DNA Technology: Labs like Othram are revolutionizing the process of identifying victims through sophisticated DNA analysis, even decades after discovery.

• Emotional Impact: Identifying a victim not only solves a criminal or accidental death but also profoundly affects the lives of surviving family members who have lived in uncertainty.

• Ongoing Investigations: While identification is a significant first step, determining the cause and circumstances of death remains a complex challenge, especially in cases with limited evidence.

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Episode Credits: Produced by Rococo Punch for Kaleidoscope. Story edited by Erica Lantz, sound design by David Woje. Executive producers include Kate Osborne, Mangesh Hadi Kadur, David and Kristen Mittleman, with contributions from the team at Othram.

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Thank you for listening to America's Crime Lab. Stay tuned for more episodes uncovering the hidden truths behind America's most perplexing cold cases.

Transcript

[Host]

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[Aylin Lancelosser]

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[Chelsea Laro]

Kaleidoscope.

[Steve Ocam]

People are laying in the freezer. For decades, the been sitting in the walk in cooler at the medical examiner's office and it's just up and down, up and down of bodies and bankers boxes. And I, I just think that we as society, we should send those, those people home. You know, ultimately this effort, especially in unidentified human remains, is about people and human dignity. I mean, bodies need to be returned to their families.

[Chelsea Laro]

There's a silent epidemic in this country. Every year thousands of people die and we have no idea who they are. There's no identification found with the body, no family to claim them. The remains are often reduced to a box of bones and stored in a medical examiner's office. And the longer the human remains sit on a shelf, the less likely it is that we'll ever know who they are. This is America's Crime Lab. I'm Aelin Lancelosser. Our producer Kathryn Fenollosa is here. So Katherine, what case do you have for me today?

[Aylin Lancelosser]

So, Aylin, I want to talk about a case from 1992. It's springtime April, and firefighters are called to a fire in a field in Ogden, Utah, which is about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City.

[Chelsea Laro]

So this is Mormon country and it's, I'm guessing, one of the most beautiful places in the world where mountains in the background and just expansive land and red rocks.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

It's beautiful. There are snow capped mountains sort of surrounding this very historic old town, which if you picture like old westerns. Right. And the area was actually known during the prohibition for having these speakeasies. So there's a very like wild west vibe of this town.

[Detective]

Yeah.

[Chelsea Laro]

And like you kind of feel like you're in the middle of nowhere, but also things are happening here.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

Exactly. And so the area where the firefighters are called to is actually a field which is next to one of the main highways and it's behind a gas station and truck stop. Firefighters get there and they realize it's actually kind of a large fire at this point. And there's a boat in the middle of the field that is also fully engulfed in flames. A boat. A boat. So it's not like we're near a body of water. As far as first responders can tell, maybe this boat has been in this field abandoned for quite some time.

[Host]

So I was curious to hear about the original crime scene, so I called detective Ty Hebden. He's with the Weber county sheriff's office.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

So initially, it was just a grass fire or a field fire that then as they got there and saw that it was a boat, and then that's when they notice that there's actually a burned body within the fire itself.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

There's somebody on the boat.

[Chelsea Laro]

Oh, my God.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

Suddenly, this has gone from a somewhat routine fire call to a possible homicide investigation. Whoa. So detectives collect whatever evidence they can find. Now, since this was a pretty large fire, there's really not that much that they can find. There are some beer cans that are scattered in the field.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

They brought in some canines to kind of combed through the weeds in the trees, seeing if there was any other persons or people in the area, but no other person was located. And most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire, that not a whole lot was salvageable or recognizable.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

They don't find any ID Nothing that tells them, you know, who this person might be. They go to the gas station and the truck stop. Nobody saw anything suspicious. The body was burned beyond recognition. So they're completely confused. Right. They now are looking at a potential homicide. They have an unidentified victim, and they have zero leads.

[Chelsea Laro]

Gosh. I mean, that's such a nightmare when you can't even identify the victim. Where do you possibly begin? And there's something so tragic to me about someone who has passed away, and nobody knows their family, their friends. Everybody has no idea what happened. That. That's one of the worst kinds of stories to start out with.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

They're trying to figure out, was this an accident? Was it intentional? Did this victim actually die on the boat? Did they die somewhere else? And the body was placed on the boat, and then the boat was set on fire? I mean, there's so many questions, and there's so few answers at this point. The one thing that they can do is they send it for an autopsy. And the autopsy determines that the victim is a male, approximately 6ft tall, and they estimate he was between the ages of 30 and 45 when he died.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

They were able to determine that he did have some smoke inhalation. They were able to see that in his lungs to show that he would have been alive at the time. Of the fire based on the fact that he was breathing in smoke.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

Oh, so now this is definitely a suspicious death. In the autopsy, they do collect a few things. Now, Remember, this is 1992, so there is some very basic DNA testing happening. They're able to collect his teeth. They match the dental records with missing persons databases, and there are no links made, so that doesn't lead them anywhere.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

They did put him into the national missing persons database, and nothing ever came back as a match.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

The police reach out to news stations to publicize the case. You know, they're hoping that someone will come forward and say, oh, my God, yes, I happen to be getting gas in that gas station. And now I'm realizing I did see something, or my uncle went missing.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

There wasn't really anything to do except, you know, hope that maybe someone would come forward or. Or something. You know, as soon as we could identify him, then that would give us, hopefully, some people to go talk to. But outside of that, without. Without anything else, there was. There was kind of nothing to do. There's a possibility that. That it is a homicide, that someone did this. There's a possibility that it could have been self initiated or there's also the possibility that it could have been an accident.

[Host]

So with no leads about the victim or the circumstances of his death, the case goes cold.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

I definitely, definitely always kept homicide there on my mind as a strong possibility.

[Host]

Now in 2024, the Weber county sheriff's office in Ogden, Utah, creates a cold case unit for the very first time. And detective Hebden is looking through the 20 cold cases they have. And this one, the body on the boat, catches his eye.

[Chelsea Laro]

Oh, wow.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

What intrigued him was you could really be solving essentially two big mysteries at once. Identifying the victim.

[Chelsea Laro]

Yeah.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

So solving an unidentified human remains cases and also solving a potential homicide.

[Chelsea Laro]

Yeah, Double whammy.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

Double. So he starts to look into the evidence that was collected, and luck is kind of on his side here.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

They laid out kind of everything that they had. And so we were seeing all of these kind of burned and charred things that were collected. Some of the burned and charred ashes and stuff are collected, were sealed in paint cans.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

When the autopsy was done, because the body was so badly burned, there was no tissue to test or take samples of.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

But then we actually had the vials of his blood that were collected by the medical examiner's office. We still had them, as well as a bag with the pubic hair.

[Host]

And detective Hebden is thinking, I have some usable DNA from the victim, and if we can figure out who he is. Maybe we can also solve the mystery of his death.

[Chelsea Laro]

Yeah. Was it an accident or was it a homicide?

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[Chelsea Laro]

So now detective Hebden knows he has some blood and hair he can test.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

Yeah.

[Host]

So he reaches out to Agent Steve Ocam, who's an investigator with the Utah State Bureau of Investigations. Steve Ocam has a history in investigating sex crimes. Now he's helping smaller police departments with their cold cases.

[Steve Ocam]

He's like, hey, we've got this old case from 1992. Do you think we could maybe solve the case? And I'm like, yeah, tell me about what happened. So I got a copy of the death Report. And man, this guy burned alive in this boat. Like, I was like, man, that is heinous. Right? Like, there was no if, ands or buts. He, he burned up alive whether it was an accident or a homicide. So we got to solve this case for these guys. So, yeah, let's, let's collaborate and see what we can do.

[Host]

Detective Hebton fills him in on what evidence is available, namely the vials of blood and the bag of pubic hair. And now Steve OCAM is even more invested in solving this case.

[Steve Ocam]

One of the most unique factors of this case was the forward thinking of the medical Examiner's office. In 1992, they drew some fluids. The victim was burnt so severely that their maybe wasn't any, like, viable tissue. Right. To DNA test. So they just thought back in the day, let's draw some of these fluids, anything we can from inside that was protected from the fire. And they had that evidence still on file.

[Chelsea Laro]

It kind of reminds me of the Carla Walker case, where they were really good at preserving so much of the evidence, the clothes she was wearing. And they were able to get DNA off of those clothes because of how they were stored. It shows how valuable that foresight incorrect storage can be.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

And to your point that Agent ocam said just the fact that they still had the evidence, he's like, you know, we all think that evidence is perfectly collected, stored, preserved, labeled, kept track of. You know, there are so many things that happen. Yeah. Like there's a flood, there's a fire, a police department or medical examiner's office moves. Things get lost in moves.

[Chelsea Laro]

And the reality is that also affects whether you can convict someone. And I mean, I even think about the O.J. case and how they were able to poke holes in just chain of custody. Did someone plant the glove? Did someone plant the blood? I mean, yeah. The reality of humans interacting with evidence, inevitably questions arise that have real world implications.

[Host]

And there's another thing to think about. Steve OCAM said it used to be fairly routine that if a body went unidentified for a while, it, it was donated to a medical school to be used as a cadaver.

[Steve Ocam]

They could literally donate it to do tests on, like to have their medical school learn how to work with bodies. And then they, for a while they buried them all in unmarked graves. Right. And then there was a while where they just cremated them all and they don't exist. So the challenges with these UHRs is to really see where is the body. Do we need the bones to be analyzed? Do we need to consider exhuming someone if they were a victim of a homicide.

[Chelsea Laro]

So if unidentified human remains were donated to science or cremated, there's no chance we'll ever know who they are?

[Host]

No. And thankfully those practices are much less common now.

[Chelsea Laro]

So I have a question. I know early on detectives did check the national missing and unidentified person system, which is also called namus, and there were no hits. But what about codis?

[Host]

So I asked Steve OCAM about that. He said it has its limitations with missing persons or unidentified remains. In Utah right now, There are roughly 150 missing persons in their database and.

[Steve Ocam]

I don't think a third of them have any DNA in codis. Like no one, the missing person, their family members, anything. So there's a 67% chance right out of the gate someone's not going to hit to anything. And I would argue it's even higher than that because tons of missing people aren't even listed in namus. So in our state, at any given time, you've got runaways, you've got adults who just, you know, have got mental health or some type of substance issues and they're in, they're out, they're in, they're out in terms of missing people.

[Host]

And because of that, Steve said there are probably closer to 450 missing persons in Utah at any given time.

[Steve Ocam]

And if you only have a third of the people have DNA in there who are in the database, I mean, your chances, mathematics is going down, down, down. And I think our experience and our results and our success with the testing we've done so far absolutely reinforces that you're not going to get a CODA set. So you have to do your due diligence and follow the steps. So once Ty dug through the evidence room and found the actual vials of the flu that had been extracted back in the day, and we were ready to roll.

[Chelsea Laro]

So what happens now?

[Host]

Well, Steve helps to find funding for cold cases when there are deaths under suspicious circumstances, and this is also a passion project for him.

[Steve Ocam]

In the last probably 18 months, we've really been hitting them, the unidentified remains, hard. In Utah, people are laying in the freezer for decades just because no one knows how they died, literally in bankers boxes. Because once all of the flesh and everything's gone from our bodies, most of us will fit in a banker's box. So you walk into the medical examiner, there's a wall in the one walk in cooler, and it's just up and down, up and down of bodies and bankers boxes. It's almost unconscionable if you just ask the people of any state, hey, did you know there's like, hundreds of people laying in the cooler that no one's working the case? They would be like, what. What ultimately happens and happened in Utah is no one tested them. No one did anything with them. They literally tried to identify a body, and if they didn't figure it out, they just went in the cooler and case closed, like, nothing's been done. And some of the agencies, like Weber county, thought, you know, let's give this a shot.

[Host]

Now, Steve ocam's office has a relationship with Othram. They're one of the labs that works.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

With the state of Utah to test.

[Host]

Crime scene evidence and human remains. And remember the burned body on the boat?

[Chelsea Laro]

Of course.

[Host]

Well, Detective Hebden has vials of his blood and some pubic hair from the autopsy 32 years ago.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

We sent them the blood because that was what we found to be probably the highest or strongest DNA standard.

[Host]

And about six weeks later, he hears back from Othram with the name Kevin Capps.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

So they sent me a document with all of the genetic makeup of the individual, and they gave me, like, family, relatives, people that were still alive. It was a pretty cool report that they gave just of tracing down that family tree of this relative and this relative, and he's got all of this genetic makeup that brings it back to a pretty solid match that it was him.

[Chelsea Laro]

The fact that they can identify a solid match like that, like it's out of nowhere, it's really shocking. I mean, this body was a person, and that person can actually be found.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

He still has family here in Utah, even not even an hour drive from me. What hit me hard was realizing that he also had a daughter. They told me that he had a daughter that would have only been four years old at the time of his death. And so that's when I immediately just kind of started thinking, like, man, does she even know? Does she know where her dad's been this whole time?

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[Howie Mandel]

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[Chelsea Laro]

So after 32 years, there's a lead on who this victim is. And I'm guessing this is where the investigation shifts back into the hands of the detectives because they have a name. But how did he end up burning in the middle of a field?

[Host]

Well, first Detective Hebden's gotta find family members of Kevin Capps.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

Yeah, as I'm starting to kind of imagine this guy and his life and the. The people that were in it and the questions that they've had for the last 30 plus years.

[Host]

Aylin, this is where Detective Hebden said he had to adjust his investigative process. Because if someone goes missing today, I mean, you could just check their online social media.

[Chelsea Laro]

Yeah, Facebook, Instagram, things like that, to see if there are any photos or messages. You can probably find clues on what they were up to before they went missing.

[Host]

But since this victim went missing in 1992, you have to look for newspaper articles, police reports, marriage certificates, you know, stuff like that. And he does find some previous police reports involving the victim from before 92, nothing after. So that supports the information he got from Othram that this guy is actually Kevin Capps. And Detective Hebden decides to reach out to the daughter.

[Chelsea Laro]

That's a big call.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

It is.

[Host]

And with these kinds of cases, the calls are always a little tricky because they need to get fresh DNA swabs from living relatives to fully confirm that the body in the boat is actually Kevin Kapps. But then there's also the fact that they may be revealing not only that somebody's died, but that that person may have been murdered.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

And then also, just because we always have to kind of question and keep on the mind of, you know, if this is a homicide or if there is any other person involvement, the four year old daughter is the least likely suspect. You know, if there is any sort of family involvement in that regard, I imagine she would probably be the one kind of questioning the most of. Of what happened.

[Detective]

I get a knock at the door, and it's kind of funny because I didn't want to answer the door because I thought it was the Mormon missionaries, but it wasn't the Mormon missionaries and it was the Weber detectives from Ogden, Utah.

[Chelsea Laro]

Wait, is that his daughter?

[Aylin Lancelosser]

Yeah.

[Host]

Her name is Chelsea Laro and she's 37 now. But the last time she saw her dad, she was only four.

[Detective]

And they're like, we need to talk to you about a family member. And I said, a family member? Like what family member? And he's like, we need to talk to you about your dad. I looked at him and I was almost drew a blank. I said, are you serious? They're like, yes. I said, okay, you can come in. And so I yelled to my mom, and I'm like, mom, guess what? You know, they. They have information about my dad. And we were just blown away. Absolutely blown away.

[Chelsea Laro]

Hang on. I mean, you get a knock on the door, thinking maybe someone's selling something, and this is what you hear after all these years, that would be jarring.

[Detective]

I was a little taken back by that because this whole time I thought that my dad was alive and he was no longer with us, which brought peace. The not knowing of where Kevin was my whole life, to know that he had been in heaven this whole time.

[Chelsea Laro]

What did she know about her dad?

[Host]

Well, Chelsea grew up with her mom as an only child, and she'd seen pictures of her dad. She was actually really close to his parents. But since she was so young when he disappeared, most of which she knew were stories that her family had told her that he was funny, he liked to play soccer. She still has a purple teddy bear he had given her. She did know that he'd had some brushes with the police and he'd spent time in jail, but as far as.

[Chelsea Laro]

She knew, he just disappeared.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

Yeah.

[Host]

Chelsea says her grandmother, Kevin Cap's mother, is the last person in their family who saw him alive.

[Detective]

So my dad was getting into trouble, and my grandma just couldn't really handle him anymore. And so she dropped him off down the street from their house with $100 and just told him to go live his life. And unfortunately, he never came back.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

Chelsea thinks that was April of 1992, the same month his body was found on the boat. And over the years, Chelsea's family was always searching for Kevin. Detective Hebden says Kevin's sister would drive around. She was just constantly on the lookout for him.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

You know, kind of every time she saw a homeless guy on the street corner, she would be kind of jumping out and being like, hey, are you Kevin? Are you Kevin? Like, just wondering, you know, is he here?

[Aylin Lancelosser]

At one point, Kevin's sister saw a photo of a man named Kevin Capps, I think it was, may have been in the newspaper or a police report who was living on the streets in New Mexico. And she becomes convinced that this is her brother, so she tries to track him down, and she can't find him. But she carries that photo around with her for years. And Chelsea says the hardest part was wondering where her dad was and why he wasn't with her.

[Detective]

I did always wonder what it would be like to have a dad in my life. The daddy daughter dances, that he missed all my soccer games. I mean, he missed my whole life. So for me, it was really hard not having him around. It's relieving to know he didn't abandon me, to know that, you know, he really did love me. You know, growing up, you think there's something wrong with you, you know, like, gosh, am I not good enough? You know, struggled with, you know, daddy issues forever, you know, being more attached to men than women. So it's relieving. It's a big weight off my shoulders. It is such a blessing. It is a close of a chapter that needed to be closed a long time ago.

[Chelsea Laro]

Wow. And how did Othram even find Chelsea?

[Aylin Lancelosser]

Yeah, I was curious about that, too.

[Detective]

In 2020, something just came to me that I needed to take my ancestry. And so my mom's like, hey, Charles, what would you like for Christmas? I was like, you know, I would love to do my ancestry, thinking that I was going to maybe find a brother, sister, extended family, you know, and lo and behold, I got a different treat. My treat was that I got to find out what happened to Kevin.

[Chelsea Laro]

So Detective Hebden and the investigator Steve Ocam solved one big part of this mystery. Who the person found burned on the boat was. But there's also this question of how he ended up there. Was it an accident or was he murdered?

[Aylin Lancelosser]

So it is still an open investigation. And Detective Hebden says there are actually a lot of other mysteries, too.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

One of the things with dealing with a body that's burned up to that extent is it makes it very difficult for us to be able to determine if there were other injuries. Right. If he had some sort of blunt force trauma or we still had the bones that we could look at, was there a knife wound or a this or that or something that we. We just weren't able to really say for certain if there was other injuries that contributed to his death.

[Aylin Lancelosser]

He says his office has new information, but they're not ready to release it to the public yet. But after 32 years, Chelsea finally knows what happened to her father. And, you know, knowing who he is heats the case up even more.

[Chelsea Laro]

Next time on America's Crime Lab takes.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

A rock and bashes in her head.

[Detective]

And leaves her to die.

[Howie Mandel]

This person has left DNA at a.

[Steve Ocam]

Crime scene that's unsolved and has committed another crime.

[Howie Mandel]

And now their DNA has been collected directly from them.

[Detective Ty Hebden]

There's a little blood spot on the jacket. Whose DNA do you think that was? It was the victim's DNA.

[Chelsea Laro]

America's Crime Lab is produced by Rococo Punch for Kaleidoscope. Erica Lantz is our story editor and sound design is by David Woje. Our producing team is Catherine Fenollosa and Jessica Alpert. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne, Mangesh Hadi Kadur and David and Kristen Mittleman. And from iHeart, Katrina Norville and Ally Perry. Special thanks to Connell Byrne, Will Pearson, Kerry Lieberman, Nikki Itor, Nathan Netoski, John Burbank, and the entire team at othram. I'm Alin Lance Lesser. Thanks for listening.

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[Host]

This is an I Heart podcast.