Evil in Huntington Beach

Summary

Cold Case Files: "Evil in Huntington Beach" – A Comprehensive Summary

Host: Paula Barros
Release Date: February 4, 2025
Duration: Approximately 40 minutes
Content Warning: The episode contains disturbing accounts of physical and sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised.

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1. Introduction to the Case

The episode begins by setting the stage in March 1968 in Huntington Beach, California. Marissa Pinson narrates the harrowing discovery of an unidentified female body, later referred to as Jane Doe, found in a plowed farm field by three young boys (00:00-02:06). Detective Earl Robitaille, a retired bureau commander from the Huntington Beach Police Department, provides context about the era, highlighting the societal backdrop of the 1960s hippie generation and the rapid growth of Huntington Beach (01:44-02:06).

Key Points:

• Date and Location: March 1968, Huntington Beach, California.
• Discovery: Three boys find a body in a plowed field, initially mistaken for a mannequin.
• Victim Details: Female, estimated age 20s to 30s, throat slit, signs of sexual assault (00:49-03:09).

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2. Initial Investigation (1968)

Detective Earl Robitaille describes the brutal nature of the crime, emphasizing the severe throat wound and the absence of identification on the victim (02:50-03:48). The initial investigation faced significant challenges due to the lack of identifying information and the remote location of the crime scene, which limited eyewitness accounts (06:38-07:40).

Notable Quote:

"When you don't know who the victim is, it's exponentially more difficult because you have no starting place." — Earl Robitaille [06:30]

Key Points:

• Crime Scene: Wide, open agricultural area with limited visibility.
• Physical Evidence: Tire tracks indicating a vehicle used in the crime, a cigarette butt near the dump site (06:38-08:03).
• Identification Attempts: Flyers, drawings, and extensive outreach to local establishments yielded a potential lead of the victim being a regular patron at a bar, but this was later disproven (08:21-09:16).

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3. The Victim's Background and Family Search

Parallel to the investigation, the narrative shifts to December 1967 in Augusta, Maine, focusing on Anita Patou and her family. Anita, a vibrant and outgoing 26-year-old, had recently moved to California seeking excitement and a new life (03:54-06:08). Her family faces growing concern as months pass without contact, intensifying their fear and uncertainty about her disappearance (10:56-18:16).

Key Points:

• Victim Identification: Anita Patou, last known to have sent a letter from Whittier, California.
• Family Efforts: Niece Lori Kurian and family members undertake their own investigation, encountering the challenges of locating someone without digital footprints in the 1960s (10:56-18:16).

Notable Quote:

"Anita was a very outgoing person, very outspoken, bubbly. She liked to laugh and tell jokes." — Lori Kurian [04:45]

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4. Reopening the Case (2000-2019)

In winter 2000, nearly 32 years after Anita's disappearance, retired homicide detective Steven Mack revisits the cold case. Initial efforts, including DNA extraction from a cigarette butt and the victim's clothing, did not yield any matches in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) (19:15-20:32). Facing a lack of leads, Mack leverages media coverage to generate new interest, leading to a potential suspect living 148 miles north of Huntington Beach. However, attempts to obtain DNA from this suspect prove unsuccessful, further complicating the investigation (20:42-23:22).

Key Points:

• Initial Reopening Efforts: Limited success with available DNA evidence; media involvement generates a potential suspect lead.
• Suspect Investigation: A bartender in Bakersfield with a prior murder charge is investigated but ultimately cleared due to insufficient DNA evidence (21:03-22:55).

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5. Advanced DNA Techniques and Breakthrough (2011-2020)

By 2011, advancements in DNA technology, particularly familial searching and genetic genealogy, offer new avenues for investigation. Despite challenges with limited DNA quality from the victim's femur, the team perseveres (23:22-24:51). In March 2019, nearly 51 years after the murder, investigators exhume Jane Doe's remains to extract DNA from her femur, albeit with limited success. The breakthrough comes in 2020 when reprocessing a decades-old blouse provides a usable DNA sample, enabling the creation of a Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) profile (34:33-35:02).

Key Points:

• Technological Advances: Use of SNP technology and genetic genealogy to identify familial links.
• DNA Extraction: Success in extracting high-quality DNA from the blouse after initial failures with skeletal remains (24:00-35:02).

Notable Quote:

"Genetic genealogy is the use of DNA testing to assist in identifying blood relatives." — Jody Hines Klan [23:34]

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6. Identifying the Killer and the Victim (2020)

The familial DNA search leads to the identification of Johnny Crisco as the prime suspect. Detective Steven Mack details the meticulous process of eliminating other brothers through DNA testing and historical records (25:54-29:45). Despite Johnny Crisco's death in 2007 from a tumor, his DNA matches the crime scene evidence, conclusively linking him to Anita Patou's murder (30:25-30:59).

Simultaneously, DNA matches from Anita's blouse reveal her true identity, leading to contact with her sister, Anne. Confirmation from the family provides the long-awaited closure, as Antoine's remains are formally identified as Anita Patou, and Johnny Crisco is recognized as her murderer (34:54-37:57).

Key Points:

• Suspect Identification: Johnny Crisco, with a history of violent offenses, is identified through DNA matching.
• Victim Identification: Anita Patou is confirmed as Jane Doe through familial DNA links and family confirmation.
• Closure: Despite Crisco's death preventing legal justice, the family gains closure with the identification and memorial service for Anita (35:18-38:39).

Notable Quotes:

"We finally have the name of the person that killed this unnamed victim." — Steven Mack [30:25]
"It was very overwhelming when we got the news and we were trying to get as much information as we could as to what happened to her." — Lori Kurian [36:03]

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7. Aftermath and Reflection

The episode concludes with the family's emotional journey towards closure. Despite Johnny Crisco never facing legal consequences, his identification brings a sense of karmic justice, as he died shortly after committing the murder. Anita Patou's family holds a memorial service, honoring her memory and finally laying her to rest with the truth about her fate (37:29-38:39).

Key Points:

• Family's Emotional Closure: Memorial service and acceptance of Anita's untimely death.
• Justice Beyond Law: The notion of justice through the identification of the perpetrator, despite his demise (37:35-37:57).

Notable Quote:

"He slit the throat of a woman and then later died with a tumor in his throat. We felt it was a little bit of karmic justice if you can have that in this case." — Jody Hines Klan [37:35]

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Conclusion

"Evil in Huntington Beach" exemplifies the relentless pursuit of justice in cold cases, showcasing how advancements in forensic technology and tenacious investigative work can ultimately bring closure to families decades later. The episode underscores the emotional toll on families of missing persons and the importance of never giving up on seeking the truth.

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Notable Quotes Summary

• Earl Robitaille:
  "When you don't know who the victim is, it's exponentially more difficult because you have no starting place." [06:30]

• Lori Kurian:
  "Anita was a very outgoing person, very outspoken, bubbly. She liked to laugh and tell jokes." [04:45]

• Jody Hines Klan:
  "Genetic genealogy is the use of DNA testing to assist in identifying blood relatives." [23:34]
  "He slit the throat of a woman and then later died with a tumor in his throat. We felt it was a little bit of karmic justice if you can have that in this case." [37:35]

• Steven Mack:
  "We finally have the name of the person that killed this unnamed victim." [30:25]

• Lori Kurian:
  "It was very overwhelming when we got the news and we were trying to get as much information as we could as to what happened to her." [36:03]

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This detailed summary encapsulates the key elements of the "Evil in Huntington Beach" episode from Cold Case Files, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the case, the investigative process, and the emotional journey towards resolution.

Transcript

[Marissa Pinson]

Hi, Cold case listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson. And before we get into this week's episode, I just wanted to remind you that episodes of Cold Case Files as well as the A and E classic podcasts, I Survived American justice and City Confidential are all available ad free on the new A and E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple plus for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now onto the show. The following episode contains disturbing accounts of physical and sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised.

[Lori Kurian]

When Anita went missing and we hadn't heard from her, every time the phone would ring, we would hope and pray it was her. And it never was. And that's when panic started. They all felt something was wrong. It was devastating.

[Earl Robitaille]

When the fire department arrived at the they found out they had a cadaver in the field. It was very obvious that her throat had been slit.

[Steven Mack]

I received a call from a woman who said her ex husband came home one night around that time frame covered in blood. This is the lead I'm looking for.

[Lori Kurian]

We were worried about Anita. We wanted to know what happened to her. She would have tried to contact someone, especially her mother.

[Marissa Pinson]

There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only about 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. It's March 1968 in Huntington Beach, California. Earl Robitaille is a retired detective bureau commander with the Huntington Beach Police department.

[Earl Robitaille]

In the 60s, we were in the middle of the hippie generation. Huntington beach was the fastest growing city in the United States. We would attract kids from all over the country. We had Hollywood close by and that whole thing, there were all these little cultish kinds of juvenile groups and some very devious people in Huntington beach at that point in time.

[Marissa Pinson]

Two miles away from the surf and sand of Huntington beach, three boys make a grim discovery. David Deer King is an investigator with the Orange County District Attorney's office.

[David Deer King]

It was a Thursday afternoon. Officer Tom Quick responded from the Huntington Beach Police Department regarding a woman that was found in a plowed farm field near Newlin in Yorktown. He was discovered by three young boys that were playing in that plowed field and they thought at first she could be a mannequin. The fire department responded and found a obviously deceased female face down in a ditch in that field.

[Earl Robitaille]

The first guys on the scene knew they had a homicide. There's no doubt about that. She was young, 20s to 30s. She was covered with a lot of blood. But it was very obvious that her throat had been slit. It Was a very nasty wound that went across both jugglers and the windpipe.

[Marissa Pinson]

It appears she's been sexually assaulted. Police know how this victim was killed, but not who she is.

[David Deer King]

No purse, no wallet and no identification was ever found for her. She was dressed as if she was going out. She had a leather jacket, black loafer shoes, purple capri pants that were pulled up but not secure. She had a flowered blouse that had been torn open.

[Earl Robitaille]

All the clothing, there were no tags, There was no identifying anything. So the prime question is who is she?

[Marissa Pinson]

It's December 1, 1967 in Augusta, Maine. Two and a half months before the unidentified body is found. Lori Kurian and Monique Poulain are Anita Patou's nieces.

[Lori Kurian]

Anita was born on March 9, 1942 in Augusta, Maine. She had six brothers and sisters. She was pretty rambunctious. Anita was a really good aunt. She was really nice to us and would play games with us. Everybody enjoyed being around her, had fun with her.

[Marissa Pinson]

Growing up in small town Augusta, Maine, the Patou brothers and sisters were part of a tight knit family.

[Lori Kurian]

When I knew that Anita was coming over, I would be really happy to see her because I knew that we would get a chance to talk and have some time together.

[Marissa Pinson]

Anita Pato is 26 in 1968 with a fun, loving and rebellious spirit.

[Lori Kurian]

Anita was a very outgoing person, very outspoken, bubbly. She liked to laugh and tell jokes. Anita really liked music and going out dancing and she liked the Beatles. She had a bit of a wild side. And Maine was pretty low key, pretty boring. People in the 50s and 60s when they graduated high school would either go work at the mills or the factories or work at a restaurant or shops that were around. Anita got a job waitressing at a local restaurant and she stayed there for a little while. Then she would get another waitress job wherever she could.

[Marissa Pinson]

At one of her jobs, Anita makes some new friends with exciting plans to get out of their small town and head for California.

[Lori Kurian]

Being from Maine, California always sounds, you know, nice weather and lots of fun and different atmosphere and nice big cities and we just didn't have that in Maine. And that's why she wanted to go out there. It was a big deal for her mom that she was going to California. That seemed like so far away. Her family really didn't want her to go. They didn't know how safe it was.

[Marissa Pinson]

Going to be Back in Huntington Beach. It's 1968 at 6pm, two hours after the unidentified body is found. Steven Mack is a retired homicide detective with the Huntington beach police department.

[Steven Mack]

The investigators realize now that they're working with Jane Doe, a victim that is unidentified.

[Earl Robitaille]

When you don't know who the victim is, it's exponentially more difficult because you have no starting place.

[Marissa Pinson]

The crime scene also presents challenges to investigators.

[Earl Robitaille]

The crime scene was in the wide open agricultural area. Little chance of anybody seeing much of anything. What we had is a muddy, plowed up field that had had heavy rain the night before that had started early. The officers noticed tire tracks in and out of the field. They were very obvious because of the rain.

[David Deer King]

There was evidence that a car had traveled onto that plowed field and made a complete circle and it had stopped on the top of the ditch area where this victim was found. It was apparent that she had been dragged from the passenger side of that car.

[Earl Robitaille]

What I was doing is I was kneeling down to get an oblique look at these tire tracks that had been left there by the suspect car. The officers immediately tasked those with plaster repairs so they could be matched to a suspect tire if the suspect vehicle could be found at a later time.

[Marissa Pinson]

Next, investigators methodically searched the area where the victim was found.

[Earl Robitaille]

The grid search at the scene is almost mandated today. Not so much back at that time, there was a lot of stuff collected. And one of those items was a cigarette butt that was very close to where it appeared the body dump had taken place.

[Marissa Pinson]

While a team catalogs physical evidence, investigators look for other ways to identify their Jane Doe victim.

[Earl Robitaille]

The investigators had flyers made up and they had drawings of the young lady, our victim, and then sent them out to every investigative agency they could think of.

[David Deer King]

The police department in Huntington beach contacted 1,100 residents, had 225 contacts with either potential suspects or. Or those who may have info. And 10,000 all point bulletins were distributed throughout 13 of the 50 states. There was a theory that she got picked up at a bar. Every beer bar, cocktail lounge, business establishment was contacted.

[Earl Robitaille]

One individual identified her as a patron of his bar and that she was a regular who came by from time to time. Everybody's elated. We finally have a lead.

[Marissa Pinson]

Jody Hines Klan is a former senior forensic scientist with the Orange county district attorney's office.

[Jody Hines Klan]

For our Jane Doe, there was a bartender that recognized her picture. And the bartender said, yeah, she comes in here.

[Marissa Pinson]

What at first looked like a solid lead soon crumbles.

[Earl Robitaille]

The bartender calls and says, I hate to tell you this, but it wasn't her because she just came in the bar today. It was disappointing. We still had the physical evidence. We had the clothing of the victim but the only thing that developed from her clothing at the time were the loafers she was wearing. Our guys traced those back to a small manufacturing company in upstate New York someplace and found out that they were sold on kind of a regional basis. So that was, you know, something that keep in the back of our mind, it might well be that she was from that area.

[Marissa Pinson]

The chance of a swift conclusion to the case is dashed. The autopsy confirms that the victim had been viciously assaulted and raped.

[Earl Robitaille]

We were dealing with a slash wound that did all of the damage in one fell swoop. It wasn't like multiple stabbings that you get where there's that emotional reaction of a lover's quarrel. No, I would assume that she had very little notice that something fatal was going to take place.

[David Deer King]

I can't think of a worse way to have your life taken. You've been raped, you've been beaten, and a knife comes to your throat and takes your life. The one interesting thing was that her toxicology levels. She had no alcohol or drugs in her system. That sort of takes you away from her having a drink with the person that ultimately took her life.

[Marissa Pinson]

It's February 1968 in Augusta, Maine. One month before Jane Doe's murder.

[Lori Kurian]

Anita wrote a letter to my grandmother. That is the envelope that the letter that she sent came in. She said she was doing well in California, she really liked the weather, and that she had taken a trip to Hollywood to see the stars, homes. She was living with this woman who had two boys. She was working at a restaurant and she really liked it. She said that she was dating someone who was a long haul truck driver and he had been taking her with him sometimes. Anita said that she was going to write in a couple of weeks and send pictures. And this was the only letter that we ever got from her. We started getting worried about Anita when we didn't receive any other letters after that. So we started trying to contact her. The address on the envelope was Whittier. So my uncle decided to contact the police and have them do a check on her at that address. When police got to the house, the house was abandoned. The house looked like it was a commune that a lot of people lived in because they left a lot of stuff in the house, but nobody's there. And that's all we knew. My uncle filed a police report, a missing persons report. He also tried to contact the hospitals, mental institutions, shelters, any place that he thought that she might be. Then the family wanted to try to figure out a way to get to California to see if we could find Anita, but we didn't have the money to do that. In 1968, there was no Internet, there wasn't cell phones. So it was really hard to locate people back then.

[Marissa Pinson]

Months pass without so much as a call from Anita. The silence takes a toll on her mother.

[Lori Kurian]

It really affected her mom. She was a very sad woman after that. And every time the phone would ring, she would hope and pray it was her. And it never was.

[Marissa Pinson]

Unaware of Anita's family's search, police in California take an unusual step in hopes of identifying this Jane Doe.

[David Deer King]

They had an open morgue showing where anybody could come down there and look at her body.

[Earl Robitaille]

And so she was kept for an unusually long time at the coroner's office. With the body under refrigeration, no one was able to identify the body.

[Marissa Pinson]

After 15 months, investigators run out of hope. The unnamed murder victim is unceremoniously buried and the case goes cold.

[Lori Kurian]

It was kind of confusing growing up listening to all the stories and then my mom and her brothers and sisters trying to figure out what happened to Anita.

[Marissa Pinson]

Over the years, Laurie has been conducting her own investigation. It's now March 1998 in Augusta, Maine, 20 years after Anita Patou goes missing.

[Lori Kurian]

Once I got older and had gone to college, computers had just come out. My dad asked me to try to find her. So I contacted America's most wanted and the Salvation army missing persons. Everybody wrote back and said that they couldn't find anything on her. So I contacted Social Security and a couple of months later, I received a letter back. Her Social Security number hadn't been used since 1968. I mean, you need it for a job. So if she's working, that would have shown up.

[Marissa Pinson]

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[Marissa Pinson]

It'S now April 9, 1996, 28 years after Anita goes missing.

[Lori Kurian]

I kind of started figuring if Anita hadn't used her Social Security number, then she probably wasn't alive. Family members started getting older and having health issues. Anita's mother, my grandmother, was getting sick and she ended up passing away in 1996. I wanted her to know where Anita was before she passed away, but that didn't happen.

[Jody Hines Klan]

She was just baffled that she never.

[Lori Kurian]

Got resolution, never heard from from Anita. Very confused, very saddened.

[Jody Hines Klan]

She was very depressed, especially as she got older.

[Marissa Pinson]

After Anita's mother passes away, Anita's niece Lori enlists her teenage daughter Dakota to help search for Aunt Anita. Together they find a Jane Doe website dedicated to finding missing persons.

[Lori Kurian]

It was amazing how many people were also on there for the same reason and looking for loved ones and trying to find out information. And my daughter found someone that looked like Anita. We just Thought, you know, how many people are going to look like that? I contacted Whittier police to see if they could help me figure out if that was her. And they told me they didn't have time to do that and that I would have to contact a investigator and have them look it up. But we didn't have the money to do that, so that wasn't an option for us.

[Marissa Pinson]

It's now winter 2000 in Huntington Beach, California. 32 years after Anita goes missing, a new detective reopens the Jane Doe investigation.

[Steven Mack]

I dug the case file out in late 2000 and began reviewing it. There wasn't a lot to go on at the time because there were no eyewitnesses to this. I was apprehensive and even somewhat worried that it would never get solved. This was the only cold case I worked where we didn't know who the victim was, which made it that much more difficult. Eventually I went to our crime lab where we dug the evidence out on Jane Doe's case. Going through the evidence, we found the cigarette butt as well as her clothing. I asked the technician to see if there could be some DNA extracted to put into codis, which is a combined DNA index system. He was able to locate both male DNA from the cigarette butt and Jane Doe's DNA from her article of clothing. Both of those were put into the system hoping to get a match. After a couple of days, I heard from the technician that there was no match. It was disappointing to me. You want that magic bullet that's going to identify Everybody.

[Marissa Pinson]

It's now 2002, 34 years after the murder, and after striking out with the DNA, Detective Mac changes tactics.

[Steven Mack]

That's when I reached out to the media, asking them to run the story again, trying to generate interest and jog somebody's memory. Homicide is a business of long shots. If you don't take the long shot, you're not going to get the results.

[Marissa Pinson]

The media coverage generates a lead to a potential suspect living 148 miles north of Huntington Beach.

[Steven Mack]

I received a call from a woman that lived in Bakersfield who said her ex husband, who was a bartender at a seafood restaurant slash tiki bar in town, came home one night around that time frame covered in blood. That really got me excited. So my partner and I jumped in our cars and drove up to Bakersfield to interview her. She gave me all the information I needed to identify him. I ran his background, found that he had committed a murder once before up in LA County. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity. I'm thinking this is the path I need. This is going to take me to the guy. When the woman called from Bakersfield and told me about her ex husband who was a bartender in town, I remembered that there was speculation by the detectives in 1968 that Jane Doe could have met her attacker in a bar and that they left together. The connection between a bartender at a business in town and a dead girl in town caught my interest. So I found out where he lived. I did a lot of late night surveillances on his residence trying to see what he did. He's 34 years older or so at the time, but I still want to know who he was.

[Marissa Pinson]

In 2005, Detective Mack decides to get a DNA sample from this new suspect so he can test it against the DNA recovered from the cigarette butt.

[Steven Mack]

So I sat out in front of his house until he put his trash at the curb. I went and took the bag of trash out of his trash can, took it back to the police department, had the DNA section go through it. They found some drinking straws in there and they were able to get male DNA, but not enough to make a comparison.

[Marissa Pinson]

Mac's partner takes a more direct approach.

[Steven Mack]

He decided to just go knock on the guy's door and talk to him. He was very cooperative with them, submitted his DNA, which ultimately led to him being cleared. And he was no longer the focus of any investigation.

[Marissa Pinson]

Over the years, investigators routinely check their DNA profile of the suspect to see if there is a match in the national database. There's no hit. The identity of Jane Doe also remains a mystery.

[Jody Hines Klan]

We have a suspect that's unidentified, we have a victim that's unidentified. And hopefully one will lead to the other.

[Marissa Pinson]

By 2011, a new DNA technique emerges that gives investigators hope.

[Jody Hines Klan]

Familial searching and genetic genealogy are avenues for DNA investigation. Genetic genealogy is the use of DNA testing to assist in identifying blood relatives. The more DNA you have in common, the closer related you are.

[Marissa Pinson]

They begin by looking for Jane Doe's relatives.

[David Deer King]

You're looking for a first degree relative, a father, a brother or a son, and that's the way familia works.

[Marissa Pinson]

Compared to basic DNA testing, the familial method requires a relatively higher amount of high quality DNA.

[Jody Hines Klan]

The technology that's used for genetic genealogy is called SNP technology. It stands for single nucleotide polymorphism. So when a SNP profile is developed, they look at over 100,000 of these single points on your DNA. So you can look at gene, genetic traits, disease, risk, ancestry. It says everything about a person we wanted to do the SNP testing, but we needed a lot of DNA for it to work. We had a lot of the suspect DNA remaining from her sexual assault kit. But Jane Doe was a little bit bigger of a problem.

[David Deer King]

There was not enough DNA material from the victim to send out for a snipple profile.

[Marissa Pinson]

In March 2019, nearly 51 years after Jane Doe's murder, investigators seek out another source for Jane Doe's DNA in order to finally determine her identity.

[Jody Hines Klan]

So the next stop was to see if we can get it directly from her body. And we thought, well, we could exhume the body, but it's going to be a long shot. The more time you let pass, the more degraded the body and the skeleton's going to be. But we thought it was our only option. So we got to the cemetery. We saw that she was buried in a wooden coffin and it was just reduced to splinters and her skeleton was exposed. I was a little bit disappointed to see the condition of the skeleton, but we were able to use her femurs to send out for testing. Testing skeletonized tissue is very time consuming process. So after it was submitted to the laboratories, we were just waiting.

[Marissa Pinson]

As detectives await the results, they look for a familial link to the killer.

[David Deer King]

We sent suspect DNA out for a SNP profile, which was then uploaded into the family tree DNA database.

[Marissa Pinson]

They discover several matches that could lead them to their suspect.

[Jody Hines Klan]

You get a candidate list of potential relatives to your suspect. Now you have to start building trees. So we had all these trees printed out, huge legal sized paper taped together in big sheets. So we found the common thread of a marriage in the family that produced four sons. They're all second cousins to the relative we found in the database. They're the right generation and they're about the right age. This is it. We found them. The killer is one of these four brothers.

[David Deer King]

I got a text from Jody saying, I think it's one of these guys. I was excited. Now we had to methodically decide which of the brothers it potentially could be. It was imperative to do whatever we could to obtain DNA samples from each of the brothers.

[Marissa Pinson]

The test results show that the killer is almost certainly Larry, Danny, Michael or Johnny Crisco.

[David Deer King]

The four males, they all had some connection to California in the 1960s. So the first process was looking at criminal histories. And you're obviously looking at the age that they would be at the time of the murder. You know, are they alive, are they deceased? And unfortunately, there was only one living brother and there were three that were deceased. The first thought is, you know, how are we going to get DNA evidence from deceased potential suspects? Do they have any children that we might be able to obtain DNA? Or is there an autopsy that might have some tissue samples? It was a daunting task.

[Jody Hines Klan]

You just play the hand of the cards you're dealt. So you have one living suspect, you have three deceased suspects. What do you do? And you develop a game plan to figure out which one it is.

[Marissa Pinson]

Detective Deer King looks for a way to get a DNA sample from Danny Crisco, the only brother still living in 2019. He starts by staking out the man's home.

[David Deer King]

There was this three day surveillance and ultimately we got trash outside the house and ran it back to the Orange County DA's office, who have this RAPID instrument. And then at 3 in the morning, I get a call from my supervisor and said, it's not the suspect.

[Jody Hines Klan]

The living brother was eliminated as a potential suspect. And now we knew that one of the three deceased brothers had to be the killer.

[David Deer King]

There was only one brother that had an autopsy. We were able to secure those tissue samples and that eliminated him.

[Marissa Pinson]

Investigators learned the third brother, Michael, was stationed in Vietnam at the time of Jane Doe's murder. So he's crossed off the suspect list.

[Jody Hines Klan]

And that left the last brother. Johnny Crisco, had to be the killer of Jane Doe.

[David Deer King]

We were able to get archived microfilmed copies of his criminal history. He had a whole wide variety of different arrests, from minor traffic stuff all the way to mayhem and child molestation. He was arrested at age 16 for morals or a statutory rape charge. Also, he was married three times and he was living in Orange county for over a year, which would have been through the time of the homicide. But we had to have concrete proof. And so our thought was, how can we get a DNA sample from him? He's been cremated. There was not an autopsy, but he did have cancer.

[Jody Hines Klan]

And we found that he had a medical procedure in 2007 and there was a biopsy taken. We called the hospital and the hospital administrator said we shouldn't have any samples for him. We don't keep samples this long. And we asked, please just go and look. And she called back and said, oh, my gosh, we have a sample for this guy. Yep, you can have it. DNA testing biopsy samples is actually very complicated. They're preserved in formaldehyde and then placed in a paraffin wax. So it was another challenge that our lab had to go through.

[Marissa Pinson]

Technicians succeed in extracting stable, high quality DNA from the biopsy tissue.

[David Deer King]

And using that, we were able to develop a profile that matched our crime scene. Finally, after 52 years, we have a name of the person that killed this unnamed victim. So obviously the question that we were looking into is where did Johnny meet the victim?

[Jody Hines Klan]

We made it to the finish line. We were able to identify Jane Doe's killer. And it's exciting. We know who committed this murder.

[Marissa Pinson]

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[Unknown]

Yes, it's 2025 and a new year means brand new opportunities. And for a lot of you out there, I know you've been thinking about one thing over the holidays and that is starting your own business. But you have so many questions like how do I get started? How do I come up with a brand? How do I even sell stuff to people? And what am I even going to sell now? Take a deep breath. Shopify has got you. Shopify makes it simple to create your brand, open for business and get your first sale. And you can get your store up and running easily with thousands of customizable templates. You don't have to be a coding nerd or a design geek to get this done. All you need to do is drag and drop. Shopify also helps with the details like shipping taxes and payments from one single dashboard so you can focus on the important stuff like growing your business. Established in 2025. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com truecrime all lowercase go to shopify.com truecrime to start selling with Shopify today. Shopify.com truecrime.

[Marissa Pinson]

Further investigation places Johnny Crisco in the vicinity of the crime back in 1968.

[Jody Hines Klan]

And there was a history of him working at bars as bouncers. So we thought maybe he had worked at that bar as a bouncer and she went in to have a good time.

[Marissa Pinson]

Having identified, the team turns back to unraveling the mystery of Jane Doe. They finally hear back from the lab about the victim's femur.

[Jody Hines Klan]

They were unable to get successful results from the femur. The DNA was very degraded and so.

[David Deer King]

Now everybody was roundtabling, well, what else can we do? And then I think it was Jody who said, hey, why don't we just reprocess her blouse?

[Jody Hines Klan]

We were always told that with all the testing over time, all the blood off of her blouse was consumed and it wasn't an option for DNA. But we want to know for sure.

[Marissa Pinson]

Fortunately, the sample has been refrigerated for 33 years and investigators submit the decades old blouse for DNA testing.

[David Deer King]

So we were able to get a usable quantity of DNA that we could send out for SNP processing and we received a match list of genetically connected people to our Jane Doe victim and we started the process of building the trees.

[Marissa Pinson]

They find the names of a handful of individuals who could have been related to Jane Doe. Then they search old newspaper obituaries from all over the country looking for those names. What they find breaks open the case.

[David Deer King]

Constance Patou was her name. She died in 2016. The obituary listed one of her siblings as missing since 1970 and her name was Anita. 1970 is good, but we're missing someone from 1968. But the decision was made that night to attempt to contact some of these family members to see if that was a viable lead or not.

[Marissa Pinson]

In June 2020, back in Maine, Anita's sister Ann gets a phone call from Detective Detective Deer King.

[David Deer King]

It would have been 9:30 on the east Coast. We made a round of calls and talked with Anne. She immediately told us that Anita was missing from 1968. And at that moment it was like, oh my gosh, this looks like it's the real deal. Our victim was Anita. It was a surreal, exciting moment for everybody connected to the case.

[Lori Kurian]

I was working and I kept getting a phone call from my Aunt Ann. So I answered and she was like, I got a call from a detective in Huntington Beach, California last night. They think they have Anita. And I was shocked. She's crying. I'm crying. I really never thought that I would ever know what happened to her.

[David Deer King]

And then we sent some photographs to show the person that we were trying to identify. And they said 100 million times that was their sister.

[Lori Kurian]

It was very overwhelming when we got the news and we were trying to get as much information as we could as to what happened to her. It was heartbreaking to know that she was killed that way. For him to do that to her and leave her there in a ditch, that was hard.

[Marissa Pinson]

The family also has to come to terms with the fact that Johnny Crisco will never face justice.

[Lori Kurian]

I wish he would have paid for what he did, but I think it was justice in the end.

[Jody Hines Klan]

He died of a tumor in his throat that blocked his airway. He slit the throat of a woman and then later died with a tumor in his throat. We felt it was a little bit of karmic justice if you can have that in this case.

[Marissa Pinson]

52 years after the body of Jane Doe was found in Huntington Beach, Anita's family finally holds a memorial service in her honor.

[Lori Kurian]

It was really heartwarming. We are really glad that she's back with us. We had the place crying. It was just something that we never thought we'd see.

[David Deer King]

This day, I elected to travel with her remains to the memorial service. And it was extremely special to not only me, but to the family and to see the closure and to meet these people that we're 3,000 miles away.

[Lori Kurian]

I just want everybody to remember her as this fun loving woman. She didn't have the chance to really live her life because it was taken from her. But she was finally found and brought back to us, and that's all we really wanted. She's here.

[Marissa Pinson]

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[Jody Hines Klan]

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[Marissa Pinson]

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[Jody Hines Klan]

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[Marissa Pinson]

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[Jody Hines Klan]

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[Marissa Pinson]

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[Jody Hines Klan]

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[Marissa Pinson]

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[Jody Hines Klan]

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[Marissa Pinson]

Listen to your podcasts.

[Unknown]

It's 2025 and a new year means brand new opportunities. And for a lot of you out there. I know you've been thinking about one thing over the holidays and that is starting your own business. But you have so many questions like how do I get started? How do I come up with a brand? How do I even sell stuff to people? And what am I even going to sell now? Take a deep breath. Shopify has got you. Shopify makes it simple to create your brand, open for business and get your first sale. And you can get your store up and running easily with thousands of customizable templates. You don't have to be a coding nerd or a design geek to get this done. All you need to do is drag and drop. Shopify also helps with the details like shipping taxes and payments from one single dashboard so you can focus on the important stuff like growing your business. Established in 2025 has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com truecrime all lowercase go to shopify.com truecrime to start selling with Shopify today. Shopify.com truecrime Recently, I stumbled across a.

[Marissa Pinson]

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