REOPENED: Vintage Murder

Summary

Cold Case Files: "Reopened: Vintage Murder" - Detailed Summary

Hosted by Paula Barros

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Introduction

"Cold Case Files," hosted by Paula Barros, delves into some of America's most perplexing unsolved murders. In the episode titled "Reopened: Vintage Murder," aired on February 6, 2025, the haunting 1973 murder of Dawn Maguyar from Chesnigh, Michigan, is meticulously examined. This summary captures the key points, discussions, insights, and conclusions of the episode, providing a comprehensive overview for those unfamiliar with the case.

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Case Overview

In January 1973, 20-year-old Dawn Maguyar embarked on a routine shopping trip in her small town of Chesnigh, Michigan, along with her husband and one-year-old son. On January 27th, she dressed warmly in a black sweater, blue slacks, and a brown leather jacket, preparing for the cold Michigan winter. After saying goodbye to her family, Dawn set out for groceries and a visit to the local mall.

However, during her drive, Dawn's car began to malfunction. She stopped at a service station where her car battery was recharged. Needing a reliable vehicle, she called her father-in-law to borrow his truck, trading her problematic car for it. Dawn resumed her shopping trip around 4 PM. When she failed to return home, her family initiated a search but only found the abandoned truck in a store parking lot. The truck's driver's side door was unlocked, with one key on the seat and another on the floor. Inside, bags of groceries, clothes, and new baby clothes suggested that Dawn had finished her shopping. Despite these findings, no witnesses came forward, and the evidence provided no leads, leaving investigators and Dawn's family in a state of uncertainty.

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Initial Investigation

Six weeks after Dawn's disappearance, in 1973, an 11-year-old boy named Wayne Summers was working on his father's farm, collecting buckets of sap for maple syrup. During his routine task, Wayne discovered something unusual:

Detective [02:55]: "I did notice a very bright color on the ground... it was a person lying on the ground, and a woman. I could tell by the hair."

Upon closer inspection, Wayne and his older brother recognized Dawn from television reports.

Detective [03:29]: "And lo and behold, here she was."

Tragically, Dawn had been killed execution-style with three bullets to the back of her head and spine. An autopsy revealed that she had also been raped. The bullets recovered were from two different .22 caliber firearms: two Remingtons and one Winchester. Initial forensic analysis determined that all bullets had been fired from the same weapon, despite the different brands, posing a unique investigative challenge.

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Struggle for Leads

For nearly a year, the case remained unsolved. A significant breakthrough occurred in June 1974 when four boys swimming in the Shiawassee River stumbled upon a revolver.

Detective [05:20]: "He stepped on this revolver... and saw that it was a revolver."

Detective Bart Barnes took custody of the weapon and, after cleaning it, found similarities in the barrel grooves with the bullets from Dawn's case. The revolver contained two Remington bullets and one Winchester, mirroring the ammunition found in Dawn's body. Detective Barnes traced the gun to a pawn shop in Yuma, Arizona, where it had been sold to a Robert Shaw. However, Shaw had left Yuma without a forwarding address, leaving investigators without a direct lead.

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Reopening the Case

Twenty years later, in 1994, Detective Gail Tobin reopened Dawn's case. Leveraging advancements in forensic technology, Tobin focused on the biological evidence, particularly DNA extracted from the rape kit.

Detective Tobin [09:04]: "When I read that case and I saw the evidence that was available, there was no question that we could solve this case."

The DNA profile obtained was compared against potential suspects, including Robert Shaw and others connected to Dawn Maguyar. Unfortunately, none of the available suspects matched the DNA profile, creating further challenges in the investigation.

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Detective Mark Pendergraaff's Investigation

In 1998, Detective Mark Pendergraaff took over the case, determined to trace the revolver's path to Michigan. By narrowing down the list of potential Robert Shaws in Michigan, Detective Pendergraaff focused on one individual who had moved from Yuma, Arizona, to Lansing, Michigan. Despite extensive questioning, DNA testing ultimately excluded Shaw as the perpetrator.

Detective [14:01]: "The lab confirmed that the DNA was not a match."

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A New Lead: Gerald Wingart

Unfazed by the setback, Shaw provided the name Gerald Weingart—a former neighbor with a criminal history involving kidnapping and rape. Although Shaw hadn't personally met Wingart, he believed Wingart might have had access to the murder weapon. Detectives sought a DNA sample from Wingart but faced challenges initially.

Detective Pendergraaff observed Wingart's smoking habits, noting his use of Merit brand cigarettes:

Detective [18:52]: "I could see that a pack of cigarettes on the dash. And I could see what the brand was. It was Merit brand."

By collecting and analyzing garbage from Wingart's residence, detectives retrieved cigarette butts containing DNA. This DNA matched the profile from the murder scene with a probability of 15.9 quadrillion to one, providing irrefutable evidence.

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Trial and Conviction

Gerald Wingart was brought to trial, where he testified that his encounter with Dawn was consensual. However, forensic expert Ann Chamberlain disproved his account by analyzing sperm cells, indicating that sexual contact occurred within six hours of Dawn's murder—making consensual claims implausible.

Detective Pendergraaff [21:32]: "That's an awful long stretch to ask someone to believe that she would meet this person she had never known before, take a ride with him to a secluded area, have sex with him. He would leave, and then somebody else come along and just kill her."

The jury deliberated for a day and a half before returning a guilty verdict on first-degree felony murder.

Detective [21:57]: "Felony murder. Guilty of first degree, felony murder."

Gerald Wingart was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, bringing closure to a case that remained unsolved for 27 years.

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Unanswered Questions

Despite the conviction, the origin of the murder weapon remains unanswered. Robert Shaw speculated on possible scenarios, suggesting that the gun could have been in the trunk of Dawn's car, a dresser drawer, or left at her apartment. However, these details remain unresolved, leaving a lingering question in an otherwise closed case.

Detective [22:23]: "It could have been in the trunk of the car because she got the car and everything... I don't know."

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Conclusion

"Dawn Maguyar's" murder case exemplifies the complexities and challenges inherent in cold case investigations. Through relentless detective work, advancements in forensic science, and unwavering determination, "Cold Case Files" narrates the journey to justice, ultimately delivering closure to a family long left in the dark. This episode underscores the importance of perseverance in the quest for truth and the profound impact that solving such cases can have on those affected.

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Produced by McKamey, Lynn and Steve Delamater. Associate Producer: Julie McGruder. Executive Producer: Ted Butler. Music by Blake Maples. Distributed by Podcast One.

Transcript

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[Narrator]

Dawn Maguyar was 20 years old in 1973. She lived in the small town of Chesning, Michigan with her husband and one year old son. On January 27th she decided to do some shopping. She would get groceries and then visit the mall in the next she put on her black sweater and blue slacks followed by her brown leather jacket because it's cold in January in Michigan. She kissed her family goodbye and set out for the store. None of them knew she would be saying goodbye forever. From A and E this is Cold Case Files Dawn's car seemed to be having issues as she made the drive, so she stopped at a service station for help. They charged her car battery while she called her father in law to ask if she could borrow his truck. When the car was charged enough to make it to her in Law's house, she drove there and traded her car for the truck. At around 4pm she once again left to go shopping. When dawn didn't come home, her her family began to search for her and though they didn't find dawn, they found the truck she was driving abandoned in a store parking lot. The driver's side door was unlocked and one of the keys from her key ring was found in the seat and another was on the floor. They assumed that she had finished her shopping because bags of groceries and clothes were found in the truck. One of the bags was new baby clothes for her son. Dawn's husband contacted the police and showed them what they had discovered. No witnesses came forward in Dawn's case and the evidence in the truck didn't provide any clues to where she might have gone. So all the police and Don's family could do was wait. Six weeks after Don had disappeared, 11 year old Wayne Summers was working on his father's farm. His job was to collect the buckets of SAP that would be made into maple syrup. He went from tree to tree until he found something that caught his attention. This is Wayne Summers now, all grown.

[Detective]

Up and just as I got to probably right about Here, actually, I didn't actually make it to that pail. I did notice a very bright color on the ground over there. And it turned out to be a bright blue, almost a fluorescent blue. So I had to stop for a moment and look and I noticed it was a person that what appeared to me being a person lying on the ground and a woman. I could tell by the hair.

[Narrator]

Wayne, along with his older brother, recognized the face of the missing woman he had seen on tv. It was Don Magyar.

[Detective]

And lo and behold, here she was.

[Narrator]

And of course it was pretty obvious.

[Detective]

That she was dead. So we knew that our normal Sunday afternoon was not going to be the same.

[Narrator]

Detective Marv Stone was called to the scene to begin the investigation.

[Detective]

There were two firearms bullet entrance holes in the head and one in the body. There were gunshot residues around the entrance holes. And the jacket had a small cruciform tear in the back and heavy gunshot residue near that. So we knew where it dealing with near muzzle to contact discharges.

[Narrator]

Basically. Dawn had been killed execution style with three bullets to the back of her head and spine. Her body was taken to the morgue for an autopsy which revealed that dawn had been raped. The three bullets were recovered from her body. Two of them were Remington brand and the other was Winchester, all.22 caliber.

[Detective]

Once we got back to the laboratory, we were able to put the fired bullets on a comparison microscope and we were able to determine that all the fired bullets had been fired from one in the same firearm.

[Narrator]

Other than the interesting fact that two different brands of ammunition had been used in one gun, the investigators didn't have any information about Don's killer. To continue the investigation, they needed some kind of lead. But it didn't come until a year later. The Shiawassee river runs through the town of Owasso, which is about a mile from the place where the abandoned truck had been found. In June of 1974, four boys were swimming in the river when one of them stepped on something that felt strange to him.

[Detective]

He stepped on this revolve, reached down and saw that it was a revolver. And then he took it to the Owasso Police Department.

[Narrator]

That was Detective Bart Barnes. He investigated the origins of the revolver. He wondered if it was possible that the revolver they found had been the one used to murder Don. He gave the gun to Marv Stone, a ballistics expert.

[Detective]

It was rusty and dirty, and when it was cleaned up, it could not be identified with the fired bullets from the body.

[Narrator]

Even though the gun couldn't be definitively connected with the bullets from Don's body. There were some interesting similarities. The grooves on the inside of the barrel were consistent with the marks on the bullets from Don's case. But even more interesting was the fact that inside the barrel, they found two Remington brand bullets and one Winchester.

[Detective]

I was kind of excited. I thought, finally we had the murder weapon.

[Narrator]

Through gun registration information, Detective Barnes was able to trace the gun to a pawn shop in Arizona. He called the shop and asked them who had bought the gun, and they.

[Detective]

Informed me that he'd sold the weapon to a Robert Shaw and gave me an address in Yuma, Arizona.

[Narrator]

Robert Shaw had left his home in Yuma, Arizona, without providing a forwarding address or any contact information. Detective Barnes wasn't sure how to proceed.

[Detective]

So you're kind of just at a standstill. There were no Robert Shaws living in the immediate Owasso area at the time. So we, again, were kind of at a dead end.

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[Narrator]

H E-L-P.com coldcase 20 years went by, and dawn's murder case was still unsolved until 1994, when Detective Gail Tobin began a review of unsolved homicide cases. She decided to reopen the case of Don Magyar. She examined the evidence, focusing on the bullets in the rape kit. Here's Detective Tobin.

[Detective]

When I read that case and I saw the evidence that was available, there was no question that we could solve this case.

[Narrator]

The DNA evidence was sent to a crime lab, and a month later, they had extracted the profile of an unknown person. Here's Detective Tobin again.

[Detective]

It was very exciting. Because of the age of the sample and the limited amount of sample we had, there was always the question as to whether or not a good sample and a good profile could be obtained. And when we knew that that had been done, yes, it was great news.

[Narrator]

For the DNA to be useful, Detective Tobin needed suspect profiles to compare to the DNA collected from Don. Making a list of potential suspects, she added Robert Shaw, the man who had been linked to the murder weapon in the original investigation, but he was never located. She also added a man who had a crush on Don and was reported to have had an altercation with his own wife. Next on the list was a man who was an acquaintance of Dawn's who had, after her death, murdered his wife. Lastly, she added a former neighbor of Don's, incarcerated for an unrelated sexual assault. All of the suspects, except for the missing Robert Shaw, gave a sample of their DNA to match against the profile of the man who had murdered Dawn. None of them matched.

[Detective]

And when you start working through your suspect list and they're all eliminated, you start to wonder if the killer is in the file or is not in the file.

[Narrator]

Three years later, in 1998, the case file found its way to Detective Mark Pendergraaff. He focused on the gun that was found in the river. Here's Detective Pendergraaff.

[Detective]

During our investigation, we decided that if we could just figure out how the gun got to Michigan, who brought it here, maybe that would lead us to the killer.

[Narrator]

He believed it was possibly the mysterious Robert Shaw. Detective Pendergraf did a search of all of the Shaws in the driver's license registration database.

[Detective]

I ran a driver's license check in the state of Michigan for all Robert Shaws that would have been old enough to have purchased this gun in 1965 found that there were 29 Robert Shaws in Michigan that were old enough to have done that.

[Narrator]

Detectives were sent to the addresses of 29 Robert Shaws to ask if that particular Robert Shaw had purchased a gun. In Arizona, this Robert Shaw lived alone and worked in a warehouse.

[Detective]

Well, I got home from work one day, and it was a card in the mailbox with a little note on the back that said, we discovered some property that might belong to you, and we'd like to talk to you about it. Come to find out, it was a gun that I had bought, well, that they thought belonged to me. And I said, yeah, I guess it does.

[Narrator]

Detective Steven Harshberger was the one who responded to Robert Shah's phone call.

[Detective]

Mr. Shah told me that he was in Yuma, Arizona between 1964 and 1966 while stationed there in the US army, and that while there, he did purchase a similar firearm from a pawn shop in Yuma.

[Narrator]

Shaw had then moved to Lansing, Michigan, which is about 40 miles from where Don was abducted. A few days later, the detectives paid Robert Shaw a visit at work to ask about the location of the gun. Here's Robert Shaw again.

[Detective]

First I said, I don't know what happened to it, because I remember at one point I was looking for it and couldn't figure out what happened to it. I mean, I couldn't find it. And so I figured, well, it's like everything else. It'll turn up somewhere where you least expect it, you know?

[Narrator]

The detectives were skeptical of Robert Shaw's story. Shaw had several other guns, and he had no problem remembering where they had gone. Here's Detective Harshberger again.

[Detective]

It was extremely unusual to have such a good memory in regard to other firearms, as many as he told us about. But this one firearm, the weapon that was used in this murder, he could not remember what had happened to it.

[Narrator]

The detectives decided to bring Shah in for questioning. They questioned him for seven hours. During that time, they took a DNA sample, and Shaw continued to maintain his innocence. The lab ran the DNA profile on Shaw and compared it to the one found at the crime scene. The lab confirmed that the DNA was not a match. Robert Shaw was relieved, but not surprised.

[Detective]

I was the dead end. I mean, the gun was mine now, where it went from me. And I had no answer. And they said, well, you know, we're not going away, you know, until we come up with something. And, you know, then, you know, I'm racking my brains, who in the heck could have got that gun?

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[Detective]

Well, I was on my way to pick up a load of wine. I was thinking something about wine and the name come into my head and I thought, Gerald Weingart.

[Narrator]

The Gerald Weingart that he's referring to is actually pronounced Wingert. Clearly, the two men weren't friends. Shaw and his wife were divorced, but near the end of their marriage, she had told him that she was already seeing someone else. Gerald Wingert. Shaw hadn't met him personally, but he thought it was possible Wingert could have had access to the gun. Detective Harshberger looked into this version of.

[Detective]

Events, and I found that he did in Fact have a 1961 conviction for kidnap and rape. And he was in prison as a result of that case until 1967 when he. He was paroled. And then he was off parole and no longer being monitored by the State Department of corrections.

[Narrator]

After 1969, to make a forensic connection between Wingert and Don's murderer, the investigators needed a DNA sample. So they went to the car dealership where he worked.

[Detective]

Mr. Wingart exited the building and walked within just a few feet of me and began lighting up a cigarette.

[Narrator]

Detectives were hopeful that he might toss the butt, giving them easy access to his DNA. But as they watched Wingart, he walked to his truck and got in while still smoking. That cigarette butt wasn't going to be the source of their DNA sample. But Detective Pendergraaff did make a key observation.

[Detective]

One thing I'd done is I had walked up to his truck, and without entering his truck, I looked in through the window and I could see that a pack of cigarettes on the dash. And I could see what the brand was. It was Merit brand. And I noticed there were quite a few cigarette butts in the ashtray. So that tells me that he smokes and tells me what brand.

[Narrator]

A day later, the detectives were outside Gerald Wingert's home when he took out four bags of garbage. Under Michigan state law, Wingart has thrown away his rights with the trash. So the detectives collected it and sifted.

[Detective]

Through the contents, put on latex gloves so you don't put your own DNA on there and go through the bags of trash. And in doing so, I found numerous cigarette butts that were Merit brand.

[Narrator]

The cigarette butts were taken to the Michigan State Crime Lab. The filters of the cigarettes were tested for saliva and skin cells that could provide a DNA profile. The profile was successfully extracted and was a perfect match with the DNA at the crime scene. This is Glenn Hall, a DNA expert from the crime lab.

[Detective]

The chance of finding another individual at random that's unrelated to the suspect in this case, the numbers were 15.9 quadrillion.

[Narrator]

Finally, 27 years after dawn Maguyar was murdered, her killer had been identified here's Detective Pendergraaf again.

[Detective]

Oh, it was a great feeling. It was unbelievable. You spend two years working on a case and all of a sudden you get that phone call and they tell you you got your guy.

[Narrator]

Gerald Wingart testified at court that he had had sex with Don, but it was consensual. Forensic expert Ann Chamberlain was able to discredit Wingart's story. The consensual intercourse defense is very common, and when you're involved in doing a lot of criminal sexual conduct cases, you always prepare for that possibility. When I did finally put them under the microscope, I just got kind of excited because there was the four plus count and there were the tails, and that pretty much sealed his fate right there. Four plus means that the sperm cells were in excellent condition and hadn't started to degrade. So the sexual contact would have had to happen no more than six hours before Don was murdered, making the consensual sex claim seem even more far fetched. Here's Detective Pendergraaff again.

[Detective]

That's an awful long stretch to ask someone to believe that she would meet this person she had never known before, take a ride with him to a secluded area, have sex with him. He would leave, and then somebody else come along and just kill her. And that's asking people to believe an awful lot.

[Narrator]

The jury deliberated for a day and a half and then returned to deliver its verdict.

[Detective]

Felony murder. Guilty of first degree, felony murder.

[Narrator]

Wingert was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The case was closed. But there's one question that remains a mystery. How did Gerald Wingert get the gun? This is what Robert Shaw thinks could have happened.

[Detective]

It could have been in the trunk of the car because she got the car and everything. Or it could have been in a dresser drawer because when you move, you'd leave everything in the drawer. Or he might have been to the apartment sometime when I was gone. You know, I don't know.

[Narrator]

Gerald Winger is serving out his sentence in the Lakeland Correctional Facility. He has no chance to ever be paroled. He's 78 years old. Cold Case Files, the podcast is hosted by Brooke giddings, produced by McKamey, Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our associate producer is Julie McGruder. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. You can find me Rookginnings on Twitter and Brooke, the podcaster, on Instagram. I'm also active in the Facebook group Podcast for Justice. Check out more Cold case [e-mail] or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the AE Real Crime blog at aetv.com realcrime.