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you're listening to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. Sam. It was 1994. On Sunday, July 17th at 7:39pm, a man named Scott H. Called the Vancouver, Washington Police Department's 911 emergency line. He said he could see his neighbor and friend Audrey through her first floor apartment's rear window. She was lying nude on the bed, unmoving, and was not responsive to his calls and knocks. And she looked, quote, kind of blue. Scott told the 911 operator he thought Audrey might have OD'd. It could happen easily, he said, because she weighed only 92 pounds. Vancouver Police Patrol Officer Scarpo responded to the scene at the Family Tree apartments, located at 8011 Northeast 4th Plain Road, Apartment F11. He spoke with Scott H. The man who had called the police who was waiting for him outside his Neighbor Audrey's unit. Scott lived next door in unit F10. He repeated that his friend Audrey was inside her apartment and she wasn't moving. The front door to Audrey's apartment was locked. Scott motioned for the officer to follow him and they proceeded through Scott's apartment next door and onto the back porch. Scott's porch was separated from Audrey's just by a low railing. Officer Scarpo skirted the railing and stepped onto Audrey's balcony or porch. He observed that the rear window to Audrey's apartment was closed and the sliding door that connected her porch to her apartment was locked. A crack between the window blinds and the windowsill allowed the officer to see into the apartment. He saw what Scott had seen, which was Audrey lying on the bed, which was located right in the living room of the apartment. She did not appear to be well. Patrol Officer Par arrived and Officer Scarpo and Scott went back out front. Since Audrey's front door was locked and the back slider was locked, Officer Parr had to breach the front door by kicking it open. The officers proceeded inside, followed by three firefighters and two paramedics from Buck Ambulance Service. Inside the small one bedroom apartment, the officers found a radio plugged in in the kitchen, turned on loudly, playing rock music from FM101, right next to the kitchen in the living room area. Audrey was lying on the waterbed, face up. She was naked atop the red bedspread. She still wore a gold necklace, but bruises around her throat pointed to strangulation. Lividity was apparent in Audrey's posterior side, consistent with her position. This indicated that she had not been moved recently and had been lying on her back consistently for some time. Once the paramedics confirmed that the woman on the bed was deceased and found a identification confirming that she was Audrey Haline, as Scott had said, Patrol Officers Scarpo and Parr cleared the apartment and then went back outside. They secured the apartment door with yellow crime scene tape, radioed for homicide, and then stood watch, making sure no one entered the suspected crime scene. Clark County Deputy Coroner Don Phillips arrived at 8:27. He checked the ambient room temperature in the apartment and then did a body core temperature check by inserting a thermometer into Audrey's liver. The temperature in the room was 78 degrees and the thermometer inserted at 10:30pm Read 88 degrees. Audrey had been dead for a while. Vancouver PD Detective Corporal Wally Stephan, who would lead the Audrey Haline investigation, arrived at the apartment at 8:11pm he observed Audrey, whose eyes were open and lips bluish. Petechiae were evident in her eyes. Fresh abrasions marred her neck. Her arms were extended by her sides slightly away from her body. Her hips were twisted to the left, but her right leg was bent at a 45 degree angle so that her right foot was under her straight left leg, which also angled out from her pelvis. It looked as though someone had deliberately posed her in a degrading fashion. Detective Stephan noted that a substance that appeared to be sticky seminal fluid was leaking from Audrey's vagina. Blood was also present in that location, trickling out, apparently from vaginal trauma. He also noted two loose, short, wiry hairs lying atop her nude abdomen near her belly button. The hairs were collected after being photographed where they were found. Starting at 9.20pm, CSI's Russell and Breifeld processed the scene. After photographing and videotaping the entire apartment, Detectives Stephan and Sundby went to contact the next of kin and in particular ensure the safety of Audrey's young son, Alex. After the csis and detectives were done, Audrey was removed by buck ambulance and taken to the morgue. Audrey was brought into the autopsy suite as she was found nude but for a gold necklace and a gold ring. At autopsy, the medical examiner, Dr. Archie Hamilton, observed multiple contusions of the skin and soft tissue around Audrey's throat. She also had a fracture of the hyoid bone. She had acute passive hyperemia and edema of the lungs. All of this was consistent with strangulation and that was determined to be the cause of death. Audrey had been presumed by many of the experienced law enforcement personnel at the scene to have been sexually assaulted. To the trained eye of the detectives observing her, it appeared that Audrey had been provocatively posed and fluid was observed in her vaginal area. It sure looked to them as though she had been raped. But the autopsy determined Audrey had no visible trauma to her external genitalia. And the autopsy report states, quote, there are no injuries to the labia major, labia minora, or other soft tissue of the vulva. There are no lacerations, contusions or abrasions of the vaginal vault. End quote. However, Audrey had significant internal trauma. Again, from the autopsy report, the vaginal vault is examined with a speculum revealing a small amount of thick whitish yellow mucoid material which is blood stained. The cervix uteri is hemorrhagic and contains a minute amount of bright red blood within the endocervical canal. Audrey also exhibited intrapelvic hemorrhage, that is vaginal bleeding due to trauma to the uterus. And fallopian tubes, the uterosacal ligaments and the parivesical soft tissue. She also had a contusion of the cervix. So while the medical examiner did not opine that Audrey had been sexually assaulted, the investigators concluded from this report that she had been. Particularly because the medical examiner concluded that, quote, all the noted injuries to Audrey occurred in the same time frame and are acute. He was referring to the strangulation injuries and those to her internal genitalia. Those wounds were all fresh and were inflicted in the same time frame. Vaginal swabs and fingernail scrapings were collected from Audrey and a spot of blood on her knee was collected via gauze swab. Okay, so who was Audrey Audre? Annette Haline, spelled A U D R a Y, was born on April 24, 1964 in Aberdeen, South Dakota to parents William and Barbara. She grew up in South Dakota with brothers Robbie and Marty. But she moved with her father William to Battleground Washington when she was 14. She later said that this move was partially prompted by her being sexually assaulted by an uncle back in South Dakota. She lived with her grandmother. Rose attended Battleground High School and spent a lot of time with her cousins. Last name Bullion. Audre graduated from Battleground high school in June 1986 and worked at high school pharmacy in Salmon Creek in the cosmetics department. She legally changed the spelling of her name to Audrey with an e. And then she met Dennis Ray Frazier, who lived in Amboy and was known as Ray. 18 year old Audrey and 22 year old Ray applied for a marriage license on on April 14, 1987. They married on June 5 and at just 20 years old, Audrey gave birth to her son, whom I'm calling Alex. Within a few years, Audrey and Ray went their separate ways. For reasons I will get into. Audrey moved into the apartment where she was killed on March 6, 1993 with her son Alex. Ray lived with her there for a short time, but by fall 1993 he had moved out and things between the two had become very acrimonious. Interviews with people who knew Audrey told detectives that she was somewhat shy and later in her life was quite lonely. That changed when she drank, when she became very outgoing and was described as flirtatious. From what I read about Audrey, it seems she was somewhat immature and insecure and craved male attention to validate herself. This resulted in her spending time with a lot of different men and that in turn made for a quite complex investigation. She tried finding stable men that she met through a newspaper ad, dating service but mostly dated men she met in the local bars. She typically went out by herself, often to see live bands because she had a predilection for musicians. She was a night owl, often staying out very late at local Vancouver clubs, Omar's City Zoo, the Brass Rail, the Halftime Bar, the Anchor and the Spot. When she drank too much, she would often bring men home. She documented many of her activities in journals described by detectives as organized and thoughtful. Her notebooks indicate she was selective and in more sober times, keeping information and notes and writing about the men she met and what she liked or didn't like about them. End quote. In early 1994, Audrey was taking steps to better herself. She enrolled in Clark College. She ended up dropping out, but her journals indicated she was trying to get her life back on track and hoped to return to school in the fall of 1994. Her best friend Angie said whenever she visited Audrey's apartment in those final months, it was clean and Audrey was sober and a committed mother. But when she was killed, she was relying on welfare payments to get by, was driving a beater 1980 light blue Datsun that often needed repairs, and Alex was spending an increasing amount of time living with his grandparents, According to an executive summary of the case compiled by Vancouver detectives, Audrey's grandmother Rose often stopped by and helped out with Alex and gave Audrey money for rent. Alex stayed with his grandparents, raised parents, the Fraziers, more often than not, and Audrey's use of drugs and alcohol in the months before her death seemed to move up a notch, which is relevant to our story. She drank, increasingly smoked marijuana, and people who knew her said she would do meth if somebody gave it to her when she died. She was only 36 years old.
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The apartment complex where Audrey lived, now called the Van Plaza Apartments, consisted of eight long, two story wooden buildings, each with multiple apartments. Every building was essentially a chain of attached apartments with every first floor apartment having a second floor apartment on top of it. The exception was Audrey's unit. Her and apartment in building F had a crawl space on top rather than another apartment above it. There was ample parking outside each building with each apartment being assigned a spot in front of the unit. Detective Stephan scanned the tidy apartment. Let me explain here that Audrey's bed was in the living room because she gave the single bedroom in the apartment to her son Alex. Detective Stephan observed that a business card lay prominently on the bed near Audrey's head. The card was from John Kim of John's Collision Auto Body in Lynwood, Washington. The card was collected into evidence. A storage trunk in the front hall was open and had clothes inside it. It looked as though someone might have been searching through it. Other things of note that attracted the detective's attention included a gold nettle marijuana pipe on the kitchen table. And two drops of blood were on the floor under the kitchen table. And one had a hair stuck in it. A big splotch of an orange or red substance that could have been ice cream was on the kitchen floor. Spots of the same substance had been splattered onto the wall above the kitchen sink. A matchbook from the bar Omar's lay on the floor. An address book sat atop a desk along with a phone. Audrey's purse sat in the same location with her ID inside. Also inside was a business card for Vancouver police Officer Bob Riley. Two other address books were located in the apartment. An old school answering machine reflected no messages but two incoming calls. It did not document the dates or times. Audrey's queen size waterbed had a headboard with storage shelves. Crime scene investigators opened a jewelry box that was on the headboard shelf and inside found several condoms in their wrappers and and one empty condom wrapper. They did not collect the empty wrapper. The toilet seat in the single bathroom was up pointing to Audrey having a male visitor recently. While the detectives were processing the crime scene, they noted that the next door neighbor who had found Audrey, Scott H. Paced around outside in front of his apartment talking on his cell phone for a long time. Their notes indicate that he seemed nervous as he talked on his phone or to neighbors who who stopped by to find out what was going on. He even expressed concern that his car was being captured in the video of the exterior portion of the apartment building being taken by one of the detectives. Let me explain here that Audrey did have a pre existing relationship with 40 year old Scott H. They were next door neighbors. They hung out together. He regularly worked on her car and he had loaned her money on occasion. He told detectives that he occasionally babysat for her son Alex and tried to be there for him. He also volunteered that he'd once hidden Audrey in his place when her ex came looking for her. He said he was a bit worried that Audrey was a little too dependent on him. Detectives came to feel that Scott was interested in Audrey, but they learned that she considered Scott just to be a friend mostly. At 1:15am detectives Stefan and Sunby asked Scott to come down to the station for an interview. He was very cooperative and was driven down to the station in a Vancouver police cruiser. Once in Detective Sunby's office, he was read his rights and he indicated he understood them and agreed to speak with the investigators. He signed the form acknowledging his rights, but he refused to allow the interview to be recorded. Detective Stefan's report indicates that Scott seemed very nervous. He continually shifted in his chair, cleared his throat and was hesitant to make eye contact. At one point during the interview, Detective Stephan even pointed out to him that that he always looked away when answering questions and he immediately denied that. While denying it, he again looked at the ground. Quote Scott H. Gave investigators every impression throughout the interview that he was being deceptive. End quote. Scott was given several glasses of water because he continually said he was thirsty. His answers were very vague. He responded in a slow, deliberate fashion, giving the impression he was thinking very carefully about his answers. He also avoided yes and no answers. Quote Scott H. Was careful not to commit himself to specific answers. The report says he gave a very disjointed account of what happened Saturday night, and a lot of what he said required clarification. It was difficult for the detectives to assemble a clear chronological account of his last interaction with Audrey, which was, it turned out, very, very important. Scott said he went to Audrey's apartment between midnight and 1am on Saturday morning, really late Friday night. She had just gotten back from a trip to Seattle. He knocked on her door and she opened it and told him that she was tired from driving home from Seattle. So they went their separate ways. On Saturday afternoon the 16th, Scott and Audrey drove to the Minute Mart, located west of the Family Tree Apartments. They bought a 12 pack of Miller Draft beer and cans and then they went back to the apartment and hung around outside, sitting in the sun and drinking beer. A cell phone salesman came to the apartment around 2pm and sold Scott a cell phone package. After he left, Audrey programmed Scott's new phone for him, loading Specific numbers, including hers, into the address book in the phone. Around 6:30 that evening, the two separated. Scott said he was going out to the Brush Perry Tavern and some other bars and he invited Audrey to go along. She declined, saying she was going to some other places. Scott headed out around 6:30. He hit up a number of bars with some friends, drank at least 12 beers and drove home, admittedly drunk, somehow arriving in one piece in his parking spot at around 2 or 2:30 in the morning. It was still hot outside, so he changed his clothes, putting on gray shorts and remaining shirtless. Scott said that very soon after he arrived home, he saw Audrey pull in and park her car. She saw his open door and came to his apartment. She seemed drunk and depressed, he said. He went to her apartment with her to talk and lay on her waterbed while she made some phone calls. He didn't know who she was talking to and could not hear what she said. When she was done talking on the phone, he said Audrey took off her black coat, jeans and blouse and lay on the bed with him. Scott said he couldn't recall whether she had taken everything off or still wore undergarments. Audrey told him she didn't want to have sex. It was at this point that the detectives asked Scott whether he and Audrey had had sex in the past. He said they had, but only once a month or so earlier, he'd used a condom, he said. It's important to note that in his initial field interview at the scene, he told detectives that his relationship with Audrey was not sexual in nature. So back to Saturday night. They were lying on the bed naked. Scott had taken his shorts off and all of a sudden there was a knock on the door. This was between 3 and 3:30 in the morning. Audrey blurted out, my pots here. Scott jumped off the bed, grabbed a blanket to wrap himself in so he wouldn't be walking around naked and and went out the back door to the porch and jumped the railing to enter his own apartment. This was normal for him to do, he said. He walked in his back door, got on his bed and fell asleep and slept until morning. He never saw who came to Audrey's door. Scott slept late the next day. Sunday. Around 12:30 or 1 on Sunday, he woke up and heard music coming from Audrey's apartment. So he knocked on her front door, but no one answered. Then he tried to call her, but no answer on the phone either. He assumed she had left with whoever knocked on her door the night before. It wasn't until that evening that not having heard from her he peeked in the rear window, and that's when he saw her lying on the bed. Detectives were, of course, quite skeptical of Scott's story. Some of it seemed to hold up. A pair of men's gray shorts were found on the floor next to Audrey's waterbed. But Scott was really wishy washy. When asked about details, he claimed he couldn't hear who she was on the phone with or her conversation. But the apartment was small, and this seemed not to be possible. He said he couldn't remember whether Audrey took off all her clothes or just some of them. He didn't know where she had put the clothes that she took off. He said he couldn't even remember where she was when she took the clothes off. Then he changed his mind and said, I think she was all the way naked. Even later, he confirmed she was definitely naked. Then there was the green blanket he left wrapped in. He couldn't remember whether he grabbed the blanket from the bed or the couch. And he couldn't remember the color of the blanket, which was particularly ludicrous given what you'll hear in a couple minutes. Then the detectives started getting to the point. They said, scott, certain forensic evidence was found on Audrey's body. Would there be any reason why your fingerprints will be found on her chest? Scott stated, I rubbed her chest. The detectives told him that there were some hairs found on her abdomen. They noted that Scott had a beard. Scott H. Then admitted that he had kissed her on her stomach. They asked him if there was any way his fingerprints would be found on her neck. And he said his hand, quote, might have brushed her neck when he touched her chest, end quote. Is this guy trying to sound guilty? But wait, it gets worse. The detectives asked if Scott had sex with Audrey that night. He said he couldn't remember. The initial plan was to have sex. He said if they had, though, he would have used a condom. They asked whether he'd had a vasectomy, and he said he hadn't. Then he seemed to rethink things and said adamantly, I know I didn't have sex with her. Well, the detective said DNA testing on the evidence recovered from Audrey's body would provide scientific answers to their questions. They told him that scientific evidence would solve the case. Scott said, quote, I guess we will find out if I stuck my peter in her. I don't think I'd be that stupid. Let's hope not, anyway, end quote. The interview wrapped up with the detectives letting Scott know that his statements were unacceptably, vaguely. His response was, I'm telling you as much as I can remember. Remember that he had consumed at least 12 beers, possibly enough to explain memory issues. Detective sun became flat out and asked Scott what he thought should happen to the person who had killed Audrey. Quote he responded to this question very weakly and without emotion, saying, whatever they do to them, lock them up. End quote. When detectives asked Scott how he would explain the medical examiner placing Audrey's time of death at between 2 and 2:30am on Sunday morning. At the time he was with Audrey, he responded with quote then I'm fucked, aren't I? One particular reason that the detectives focused on Scott H. Were some discrepancies in his story versus what Officer Scarbo had found in Audrey's apartment. This pertained to the rear window. Remember that Officer Scarbo had gone with Scott around to the back porch and peeked through the blinds of this window where there was a crack between the bottom of the blinds and the windowsill. Through the crack he spied Audrey's body on the bed. The officer was certain that this rear window was closed and the mini blinds were closed, but there was a small gap that he could peek through. When Detective Stefan surveyed the apartment from inside, he noted that now the rear porch window blinds were fully closed and the bottom of the blinds were touching the windowsill. However, the sliding window was now open. On the floor below the window was a potted plant that appeared to have been knocked onto the floor from the windowsill. None of this matched up with what first Responding Officer Scarpo had told him. He verified with Scarpo that indeed the window had been closed, but a crack was visible. He had to peer under the blinds and through the glass to see Audrey. Someone had opened the window between when Officer Scarbo viewed it and when the detectives arrived. Scott H. Was questioned about this oddity. Officer Scarbo knew that no one had entered the apartment after he and his colleague kicked down the door. So how had the window been opened? Scott did not have an answer for this that investigators found satisfactory at all. He said that Audrey's window was actually open all the way the whole time. He knew this because when he first went to look in the window, he raised the shade with his hand and that's when he saw Audrey. After he saw Audrey through the window, he shoved the borrowed blanket through the rear balcony window into her apartment before he called 91 1. This must have been what knocked the plant off the windowsill. The detectives told Scott that the uniformed officer would not lie about how he found the window and was trained to observe these things. Scott insisted that the window was open and he left it that way. They asked him whether his fingerprints would be found on the rear sliding window, and he said no, they wouldn't. He still couldn't remember the color of the blanket. Further, Scott could not explain why when Officer Scarpa was on the back patio looking in Audrey's window, there were no items of clothing lying on the patio. But when the detectives checked out the apartment, there were some items of clothing lying on Audrey's balcony. Scott suggested that perhaps there was clothing wrapped in the blanket that he had grabbed from Audrey's apartment and wrapped around himself as he left. There was something else weird about Scott's story. He admitted that after he saw Audrey on the bed, before he called the police, he called his brother Ken. He said he did this because Ken had experience in this. He had once found a dead person. Scott thought Audrey might be dead and wanted his brother's advice on what to do. They spoke for two to three minutes, and he hung up and called the vpd. All in all, Scott's interview lasted almost four hours. At the end, he agreed to take a polygraph exam, and then the officers drove him back to his apartment. While in the detective's car, he made a spontaneous comment about how the investigators wouldn't be able to help him. Scott H. Quickly became the prime suspect in Audrey's murder. As a cold case detective later put it, he was the last person to see Audrey alive and the first person to see her dead. His story was all over the place and was somewhat unbelievable. He flat out lied about the window, and he was very hinky about sexual contact with Audrey. I hate to talk about investigators getting tunnel vision, but it happens. And in this case, Scott was the only person in the sights of the investigators. He was called the overwhelming circumstantial suspect in later case summaries. The result was that there was a significant lack of investigation and documentation about the remainder of Audrey's life, including her whereabouts and associates. In her last couple of days, investigators apparently did not canvass any of the other buildings in the apartment complex, concentrating exclusively on building F. And they didn't even finish that. The tenants in units F2, F3, and F9 were never identified or interviewed. So later, detectives had an uphill battle to reconstruct Audrey's last movements. Here's what they've come up with. Several days before her murder, Audrey left town to go to Seattle. Late On Friday night, June 15, Audrey drove home from Seattle. She told people she was planning on returning there on Monday, and was considering moving there. But she told Scott that something bad had happened there. On Saturday the 16th, she hung out with Scott, drinking beer and calling people they knew from his new cell phone. On Saturday evening, she spoke with her brother Robbie on her apartment phone sometime between 7:30 and 8pm she also told him about the incident in Seattle. She told him that that night, Saturday, she planned to go to the Harvest Days bar in Battleground and then hit some local clubs to see some bands. Audrey's phone bill reflected that she made six calls from her apartment phone on Saturday, July 16, 1994, between 1:10pm and 8:12pm the call at 8:12, believed to be the call to Robbie, lasted approximately 14 minutes. Then, sometime after 9:00pm Audrey was seen arriving alone at Omar's. Police verified this with a friend of hers, a female bartender named Renee. The band Not Guilty, which is an awesome band name, was playing at the bar. No one saw when she left Omar's or with whom. She got home around 2:30. Scott saw her drive up to the apartment alone. She came into his place and then Scott went to hers. They got naked or nearly naked on the bed. Someone knocked on the door at 3 or 3:30 and Scott left out the back. And then Audrey didn't answer her door around 12:30 the next day. Incorporating all this information and their observations at the crime scene, investigators concluded that Audrey had had sexual intercourse with someone, whether consensual or not, sometime after she got home in the early hours of Sunday morning. And based on the autopsy report, they believed that the same person had killed her. And some signs pointed to an altercation. The spill on the kitchen floor that matched spatter on the wall indicated someone had thrown a cup of liquid. Two blood droplets were found on the kitchen floor, and Audrey had blood on her knee. And Audrey had some bruises on her body consistent with trying to fight off an attacker.
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Eager to find out who had knocked on Audrey's door around three in the morning. Assuming Scott H. Was telling the truth, Detective Stefan picked up Audrey's phone and tried to use the redial feature to call the last number she'd called. They wanted to see who she'd talked to late night and if she'd possibly called her pot dealer. However, nothing happened when he did this. Then he tested it by calling dispatch and hanging up when someone answered. And then he tried the redial feature again. And this time it worked. Calling dispatch back. This failure can happen if the last call is long distance. The redial feature only worked on local calls, but it could also mean that somebody had disabled the redial feature. Investigators research indicated this could have been done by pressing the number one key or by unplugging the phone from the wall for 30 minutes. But the question was, how many people would know this? One thing I do not know, but really want to, is whether the investigators pulled Audrey's phone records for Sunday morning, the time when Scott H. Was lying on the waterbed while Audrey made some phone calls. Detective Stefan was thorough, so I believe he would have taken this investigative step. But it's if so, the numbers Audrey dialed led nowhere, perhaps to a payphone or other public location that did not help identify the person whom she'd called. He remained a mystery. Shockingly, while the crime scene tape was still up but the apartment was not being monitored, two female neighbors of Audrey's decided to take the opportunity to rob the place. Vicky K. And Deborah B. Entered the apartment and stole the radio and a vcr. The summary report I reviewed referred to this as tweaker behavior, indicating the two were junkies who were just looking for stuff to sell and likely were not involved in the murder. This was the second no forced entry burglary at the apartment in just a couple of weeks. The week before her death, Audrey had called 911 to report a burglary in which someone had entered her apartment with a key. When she left for Seattle, she had asked the apartment manager, Cliff Persons, to change the locks because she felt like someone was coming in and going through her things. However, Persons failed to do anything. Before I get into what happened when detectives contacted Audrey's estranged husband Ray, let me give you a little background on their relationship. Let me be clear here that all of this information I'm about to relate comes directly from the police reports on Audrey's case. I cannot confirm one way or another whether any of the behavior documented in the reports on Ray's part is accurate. But the reports reflect that the Fraziers marriage was rocky, which is a vast understatement. Audrey told her friends, family and eventually the authorities that Ray beat her, raped her, put his hand over her mouth until she passed out and even held her down with his foot on her chest. She suffered such pervasive domestic violence at Ray's hands that she eventually obtained a no contact order from the court. Audrey left Ray for the first time in 1991 and went to stay with her cousin Kathy Bullion at her trailer home. While she was living there, someone doused the interior of their trailer with gasoline and slashed Audrey's tires. She filed a police report about this incident accusing Ray, but there was no proof that he was the culprit. Ray continued to follow her and Audrey claimed stalker and would continually try to get her back. She did take him back a few times, the last time being in March 1993 when she moved into the family Tree Apartments. Ray lived with her there for a few months, but she finally kicked him out for good in the fall of that year. Again, though, that was not the end of the story. From that time through March 1994, Audrey made many 911 calls and police reports to report restraining order violations and malicious mischief on the part of her husband. Malicious mischief is putting it mildly. The behavior cited on the part of Ray was actually stalking and spying. He would peek in Audrey's windows and harass her. He enlisted a friend who lived at Audrey's apartment complex to help him watch her and keep track of where she went and who she was seeing. On one occasion, the apartment manager, Cliff Parsons, found Ray hiding in the crawlspace above Audrey's apartment. She filed yet another report alleging that Ray called her in February 1994 and said, boom, you're dead. This rage driven stalker behavior was exactly what would be expected of someone who would eventually kill Audrey. The former couple's relationship was all the more contentious because Audrey had been awarded custody of Alex. When Ray failed to show up for the custody hearing. Ray contested this and the police notes indicate that he used the custody dispute as a means to try to control Audrey. They noted that Ray was never very interested in Alex and Alex spent most of his time staying at the home of Ray's parents, Judy and Dennis Frazier. In late 1993, Audrey and Ray had a court hearing. While in court, Audrey's car was stolen. Ray had an alibi of course, since he was at the hearing as well. But police learned that he had in fact arranged for the car to be stolen, enlisting two of his friends and Timo T and convicted sex offender Mike M to steal the car. Ray was charged with the theft, but reports are lost and what happened with this is unclear. By June of 1994 when Audrey was killed, she was really struggling. Ray was not paying child support and Audrey could not afford to provide for Alex's needs. Alex was essentially living with his grandparents, Ray's parents. Audrey signed over medical permissions pertaining to Alex to her mother in law Judy in June of 1994 and there were some indications that she was considering awarding full custody to Judy and Dennis which they were pushing for. When she was killed, Audrey was under the protection of a no contact order requiring Ray to stay away from her. She had told pretty much everyone she knew that Ray was going to kill her. She told friend Tammy M. And her cousin Kathy Bullion that if she died that summer, make sure police looked at Ray, even if it looked like a suicide. On the night that Audrey was found murdered, Detectives Stephan and Sunby went to track down Dennis Ray Frazier. They called his mother Judy, who lived in Amboy. She was able to assure them that she was taking care of Audrey's five year old son Alex and he was safe and sound with her. As for her son Ray, Judy informed them that he was currently incarcerated in the Clark county jail. On March 8th, 1994, Ray had been sentenced to 45 days in jail for engineering the theft of Audrey's car and for a 1992 cocaine possession case. He didn't turn himself in to start serving his sentence until late June. When detectives visited Ray in jail on July 18. He told them he was booked into the jail on June 29 and had been there ever since. But he admitted to making some phone calls to his buddy Timo T. Who had been named as a suspect in stealing Audrey's car. Police wondered if Ray had perhaps gotten his friends to get rid of his ex wife while he was in jail. Investigators did locate two potential witnesses who might have important information. To this day it's not known whether they indeed saw the suspect. These were apartment complex residents Kim b. And her 14 year old companion Chenoa W. The two happened to walk past Audrey's apartment on Sunday the 17th, around 10 in the morning, many hours before Audrey was found. They noticed a man wearing shorts standing in the open doorway of the apartment. The door was wide open and the man saw them and looked nervous. Kim thought she'd seen this guy around the complex one or two times before, but she wasn't Certain, she said he looked a little bit like Audrey's neighbor, Scott H. But he wasn't him. He was a white male, 30s to 40s, tall and thin, with long, scraggly grayish hair to his shoulders. Chenoa verified this sighting, but she also did not know who this man was. It's important to note that another neighbor named Deborah B. One of the two women who had robbed the apartment after Audrey's slaying, reported that she had seen Audrey hanging out with a person who matched the description of this man a few times in recent weeks, but she had no idea who he was. Police wanted to know who the man in Audrey's doorway was too. And because it was 1994, they might be able to use science to find out. Detectives submitted the vaginal swabs collected from Audrey at autopsy for DNA testing. The testing revealed the presence of sperm, and the sperm fraction yielded a male DNA profile from the man presumed to be Audrey's killer. Back then, before the existence of widespread STR based DNA databases, the DNA profile was used primarily for direct comparison purposes. Investigators started with their prime suspect, Scott H. His DNA was collected in November 1994 pursuant to his search warrant. When the testing was completed, it eliminated him as being the donor of the semen found in Audrey's vagina. Despite Scott's hinky behavior, inconsistencies and deception, the essential portion of his story never changed, even from all the way Back to his 911 call. On the night he found Audrey deceased, he told the operator that he'd been with Audrey. And on Saturday night the doorbell rang and quote, some guy was coming over. Here's an Excerpt from the 911 call. 91 1. What time did you leave her last night? Scott it was about 22 30. I went out the back door and into my place because I didn't want to be there. 91 1. What was the guy coming over? Scott I didn't, I didn't see anybody or anything. All I know is she went to the front door and I was already gone. 91 1, huh? So you left out the back door because somebody was at the front door. Scott Right. 91 1. And you have no idea who it was? Scott no, I don't. I didn't see anything or any car or anything. In fact, I just went right to bed. Faced with the reality that the DNA did not match their prime suspect, investigators had to turn to other avenues of investigation. For example, police worked quickly to identify a man described as Audrey's boyfriend. Scott described a guy that Audrey Was seeing as a white male, about 23 or 24 years old, 5'5 to 5'7, 160 pounds, with blonde frizzy hair past his shoulders. Scott didn't know his name, but he played in a band. He believed this guy was the cause of the event in Seattle that had traumatized Audrey. She told Scott she had argued with her boyfriend at a bar there and he had grabbed her by the throat. Scott said that Audrey was angry and upset enough about this that she left Seattle and abruptly drove home late Friday night. Police learned that this was Mike L. Who had first met Audrey on Wednesday, July 6, when his band played at the Omar's bar in Vancouver. He and his bandmate hung out with her later that night, and then the next night she came back to watch them play again. Mike and Audrey hit it off, and he stayed at her apartment for the remainder of that week and through the weekend. Mike admitted that he and Audrey had had consensual sex at her apartment on July 9. He used a condom that she retrieved from somewhere in her apartment. Detectives wondered if that could have been the source of the empty condom wrapper they'd found. Mike told the investigators that while he was staying with Audrey, he met her next door neighbor and he seemed jealous of him. This was Scott. Then Mike L. Invited Audrey to Seattle. So on Monday, July 11, they drove up to Seattle in Audrey's car and stayed with some friends of Mike's. They spent their nights watching his band perform at Alexander's bar in Everett. And during the days they went sightseeing. Very late On Thursday evening, July 14, he and Audrey had unprotected sex. Police made a note of this, knowing that semen was collected from Audrey's vagina on Sunday. On Friday night, Mike said Audrey began acting crazy during his gig. He saw her talking with two men, Perry and James, and suspected they were doing drugs together. He tried to talk to her, but she walked away. He admitted that he grabbed her by the throat, but said he was just trying to get her attention. She told him that what she was doing was none of his business. He told the detectives that he'd been through all this with a prior girlfriend and knew where this was going. So he told Audrey it was time for her to go. He filled her car with gas and brought her a coffee. He packed her things into the trunk of her car and sent her on her way back to Vancouver at about three in the morning. He never talked to or heard from her again. He said he was pretty angry with her because of this whole Incident. Well, there are two sides to every story. And Audrey told Scott H. A different version. She said Mike was jealous because while he and his band were playing on stage at the club, Audrey was flirting with two men in the crowd, James and Perry. She sat on their laps and smoked some pot with them. Mike Eller was angry and choked her. She said. After the choking incident, she ran up to James and Perry and told them that her boyfriend was jealous and had strangled her. At this point, James handed her his employer's card so that she could get in touch with him if she needed help. This business card was the one for John's collision that was found next to Audrey's head on her waterbed. She'd been given that card by James. In the very early morning hours of Saturday, July 16, in the Seattle bar, Detective Stephan contacted these two men. But it doesn't seem that Audrey had ever contacted them after the initial meeting. And they were not placed. In Vancouver on the weekend she was killed. The business card was believed to have been placed on the bed in an attempt by the suspect to point the investigators in the wrong direction. Okay, so Mike L. Was angry with Audrey and had grabbed her by the throat. He had unprotected sex with her just a couple of days before the murder. Dude just put himself squarely in suspect territory. But the investigators learned through follow up that Mike had an alibi for Saturday night, Sunday morning when Audrey had been killed. He was staying with friends in Seattle that weekend, and they all confirmed his presence and that he didn't have time to go back and forth to Vancouver to murder someone. Mike L. Was one of the first non Scott H. Suspects to be eliminated by the DNA sample in evidence. His DNA, collected by investigators in the form of a blood draw as well as hair samples, did not match the DNA of the person whose semen was found inside Audrey. And his alibi was rock solid. He was not in Vancouver on the night of the murder. Detective Stephan moved on from him.
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As I mentioned, Audrey's murder investigation was complicated by the fact that there were many, many men whose name came up in the investigation. I think it may be one of the more complex investigations I've seen in terms of sheer number of potential suspects. The Family Tree apartment complex seems to have been occupied primarily by young working class single individuals who were very social and there was a lot of communal drinking and drugs. Audrey had several male friends at the apartment complex. Obviously we know about Scott H. But others were neighbor Tim F. And neighbor Kenneth K. According to the case summary, I read, quote, these three men and other males in the complex frequently visited with Audrey. They would stop by, knock on her door, bum cigarettes, use drugs with her, borrow her car, and likely occasionally seek sexual relations with her. End quote. Audrey's apartment was also the closest in the complex to a small series of open air garages that were available to residents. These garages were typically used by male tenants and their friends. Drinking, taking drugs, working on their cars and hanging out. The garage area attracted untold numbers of men who would have had very prominent views of Audrey's apartment. Police went through Audrey's several address books and followed up on every male name that was written there. One of these was very confusingly named Dennis Frazier, the same name as her husband. He was a bartender from Omar's who admitted that he and Audrey had been to each other's apartments but denied that they'd ever been intimate. Police looked into Kenneth H. Scott's brother, who knew Audrey because he worked on her car. Of course, Scott had admitted to calling Ken before calling the police, so police wondered if he had been involved in Audrey's murder. Police went to call on him at his home and he wasn't there. But they soon received a phone call from his attorney who said he was also representing Scott H. Ken had retained him to represent his brother because he was concerned about Scott being pulled into the investigation into Audrey's murder. Too late. As I said, Tim F. Was another resident of the Family Tree apartment complex. The 22 year old fence installer lived in Audrey's building and and was friends with her. Even though he was described as odd. He had recently been left by his wife as he had a history of domestic abuse both with her and with a previous spouse in California. And there were quite a few reasons to suspect that Tim F. Might have killed Audrey. For one thing, he had a key to her apartment. The two had dated in the past and still hung out. A note found in her apartment read, tim went out for some birthday beers. Lock up when you leave. Despite the key, detectives felt Tim still could have been the one who knocked on Audrey's door late on Saturday night. In another strike against him, he had expressed jealousy getting angry with Audrey for flirting with another man at a bar and telling people that Audrey was a pos. Several residents of the apartment complex said Tim and Audrey had been sexually active in the past, but now that she was dead, he was downplaying his relationship with her. Finally, in his interview at the scene where he showed up as an inquisitive neighbor, Tim told detectives Audrey confided in him all about her week in Seattle and and her boyfriend there choking her. This conversation took place while they were sharing a smoke around 9pm on the Saturday night Audrey was killed. Tim moved on to the suspect list. After Audrey's death, Tim left pretty quickly for California. He was in jail there pending trial after stabbing a man to death. When Washington investigators caught up with him, he agreed to speak with them and did so twice. He denied having anything to do with Audrey's murder and willingly gave a DNA sample. His alibi was that he was on a camping trip on Saturday night at Goose Lake, two hours from Vancouver. The people that he said he was with were contacted by detectives and they all confirmed that Tim was with them the entire camping trip and could not have made the round trip back and forth to Vancouver to kill Audrey. Detective Stephan came to believe that Tim did not kill Audrey and indeed the DNA excluded him. But Tim was still weird and his statements unreliable. He told the detective that Audrey had been hanging out with a guy named Shane that she met at a local bar. He said they would find his name in Audrey's address book and they did. Unfortunately, it was just the first name and they were never really able to identify exactly who Shane was. In a follow up interview, Tim denied ever mentioning Shane. This kind of shit must make the detectives want to pull their hair out. Tim ended up being in prison for 16 years for the stabbing murder he committed in California. But as I said, DNA eliminated him in Audrey's murder. I'm not going to get too much into the weeds about neighbor Ken K. And his wife Vicki. They lived in apartment F6, just two down from Audrey. They were home on the night of the murder, Detectives learned in the initial canvas. Both said they didn't know Audrey very well. But after her murder, another tenant, Bob B. Said Ken K. Told him that he had been in a dispute with Audrey over some drug debt. Police reports reflected that on July 5, just a couple of weeks before her death, Audrey had called 911 and reported that Ken had borrowed her car the previous day and failed to return it. And some jailhouse informants told investigators that the witness, Kim B. Had lied about seeing a man with scraggly hair in Audrey's doorway because she was protecting Ken K. Who had told people that he hurt a woman. This whole Ken K. Angle was heavily tied up with drugs and domestic abuse. His wife Vicki, meanwhile, was one of the women who broke into Audrey's apartment with the crime scene tape still up to steal stuff that she could fence. Detectives notes say Vicky K. Was a frequent flyer tweaker, meaning essentially she was a meth head who did crazy stuff because of her habit. But neither of them killed Audrey. After giving a sample, Ken K. Was eliminated by DNA as being the donor of the semen. And since women don't leave semen behind and the killer was believed to be a male, Vicki was not explored further. So throughout the remainder of 1994, numerous potential suspects were contacted, interviewed, polygraphed DNA tested and ruled out. These included reaches, men like apartment manager Cliff Persons and Audrey's cousin Ron B. No one matched to the unsubbed DNA, and Audrey's case stagnated. An April 27, 1995 report by Vancouver PD Corporal Harry Russell stated that all investigative leads had been exhausted in 1997. Detective Wally Stephan still maintained four binders full of reports relating to Audrey's case because even a few years after the murder, tips and leads were still trickling in. One of these was about a man named Vincent M. Who had lived with his wife Frances in the Family Tree Apartments when Audrey was killed. Frances contacted Detective Stefan and said her husband might have killed Audrey. She said his mother was the resident manager of the apartment complex and had master keys. Further, in the month leading up to the murder, Vincent had been using meth and drinking heavily. He became a violent rage monster, raping Frances and strangling her once to the point that she almost passed out. Frances confirmed that Vincent knew Audrey. He used to work on his cars in the garage near Audrey's apartment, and he and his buddy Terry would hang out with Audrey. In fact, it was at the point that she had accused him of sleeping with Audrey. He denied it. Frances said that after the murder, he became obsessed with news reports and articles about Audrey's death. She confronted him about whether he killed her, and he laughed it off. Detectives interviewed Vincent and He admitted that he had met Audrey when he was working on cars outside her apartment and even that he had gone into her apartment once and they sat on the couch watching TV and they might have been kissing. But then Vincent said he saw somebody peeking in the window and it freaked him out. Audrey said it was probably her ex husband and not to worry about it. But he didn't go back to her apartment after that. For unknown reasons, Detective Stephan was unable to obtain a comparison DNA sample from Vincent M. At this time. He stayed on the list. Another man who was investigated in the late 90s was Michael Gallatin. Gallatin was on law enforcement radar because he was a convicted serial rapist and murder suspect operating in the area in the time Audrey was killed. A witness reported that Gallatin had been seen trying to pick Audrey up at Omar's bar around the time of her death in 1998. Gallatin's profile was compared to the unknown profile in Audrey's case, and he was eliminated. Dennis Heath Smith was another violent criminal who had possibly crossed paths with Audrey. He was a serial strangulation and murder suspect on parole who returned to Vancouver in the summer of 1994. He frequented Omar's bar and abducted a woman named Catherine Calabi from Omar's parking lot in November of 1995. Her body was never found, but Smith was presumed to have murdered her. The reason he was on parole in the first place was that in 1987, he had strangled his sister Patricia Johnson and dumped her body in Salmon Creek. According to detectives, both of his female victims looked similar to Audrey. Smith took his own life in prison in 2002, and he was eliminated by DNA in 2003, there was a development in the case. What happened was in February 2003, Detective Stefan learned the name of two brothers who were potential suspects in Audrey's case. Nelson Arnold Lewis had strangled a woman in Vancouver in the early 90s, and his brother Alan Larry Lewis was present during this murder. Both had multiple law enforcement contacts in Vancouver in the early 90s. And Nelson was a suspect in a Portland child sex abuse case in 1996. They were bad dudes. Nelson's DNA was in CODIS, but Allen's wasn't. This was when Detective Stephan learned that the DNA of the unknown suspect in the Audrey Haline case was not in CODIS. How is this possible, you ask? Well, back in 1994, the Washington State Crime Label had developed a suspect DNA profile from the semen found inside Audrey. But because it was still sort of early in the DNA era, the lab used RFLP testing rather than the STR testing that became the standard required for codis. So the profile was not in the federal offender DNA database. To remedy this, the crime lab advised Detective Stefan to resubmit the vaginal swabs from Audrey's rape kit for updated testing. Thank God they were still in the refrigerator in the evidence unit. Detective Stephan submitted the swabs to analyst Cheryl Crabtree of the crime lab, who was able to obtain a CODIS eligible STR profile at that time. So the unknown offender's DNA was entered into CODIS in 2003. This eliminated the 1990s suspect Vincent M. Whose DNA was already in the system. Other suspects were eliminated in this manner as well. No hits were ever obtained on the profile, and the case went dormant.
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Detective Barbara Nopel reopened the Audrey Haline case in late 2015 and started trying to make heads or tails out of a 1994 investigation that had left some loose ends. She noted that Scott H. Had been eliminated as the source of the DNA inside Audrey's vagina. The DNA of someone else. Someone the Vancouver investigators referred to as Individual A was tied to the murder. And to Detective Nopal, this was not a surprise. All the reports indicated that Scott H. Was just somebody who had inserted himself into the investigation by calling the police. Since that time, he'd been living a normal life. He had no history of violence, and every witness they interviewed about him was surprised that they were even looking at him. Detective Noble felt strongly that Audrey had been raped and murdered by a man who had somehow slipped through police fingers. And she set out to try to find out who individual A was. She started with Audrey's husband, suspect Ray Frazier. Remember, the 1994 detectives interviewed him in jail after Audrey's murder, and. And he told them he had been there since June 29th. Well, a law enforcement Friend of Audrey's father William had done some digging and learned that it was possible Ray had been out of jail on daily work release by mid July 1994. He had to be back at the jail at night. But remember there was a possibility that Audrey had been killed in the morning. The witnesses, Kim and Chenoa had seen a man in Audrey's doorway at 10am Court records indicated that indeed Ray's jail sentence was ordered to be served on work release. But wait, there was more. Ray had been charged on July 18th, 1994 for PCs Meth. This was the very day after Audrey was slain. For God's sake, was this man out of jail and walking around free to kill Audrey and no one had put that together. Detective Noble was unsure. The July 18 drug charge could have just been delayed in hitting the system. But it was noted that Audrey had told someone at a fourth of July celebration that she was shaken because she had just seen her ex at the public event and she was afraid he was going to come after her. This tended to indicate that Ray was indeed out and about in July of 1994. A review of 1994 jail records indicated Ray was in custody until August 3rd. But those records did not reflect when he had been booked in. Even if he had been in jail and could not have done it himself, he could have orchestrated the murder somehow just as he had orchestrated the theft of Audrey's car. Detective Nopal noted all the reasons that Ray was an intriguing suspect. Earlier investigators case summaries referred to Ray as the overwhelming suspect in terms of motive. Audrey's family was convinced that he was involved in her murders since she had told people if I turn up dead Ray did it. His DNA was not on file and he had never been eliminated. Ray had not behaved himself in the years since his estranged wife's murder. He got a DUI in October 1995 and got 180 days in jail for forgery in December 1995. In the 1990s a good friend of Ray's named Steve C. Told VPD detective Isley that Ray had descended into meth. In 2004 Ray's son Alex filed an assault report saying that Ray had been angry with him and grabbed him with his hand around the throat. When officers responded, Ray was found to be living in a trailer on his parents property. He refused to allow officers access to the trailer While was belligerent and non cooperative. He was ultimately booked for the assault. In 2009 Ray was a suspect of a rape allegation by his live in girlfriend's daughter. Ultimately, she somewhat recanted her story and charges were dropped. Despite being a four time convicted felon in 2016, when Detective Nopal was looking at him, Ray's DNA was not in codis. Detective Nopal obtained a search warrant for a DNA sample for Ray, who was living in Cougar, Washington. I have no details on the collection of the DNA sample from Ray, but I do know that it eliminated him from being the person who had left semen inside a dying Audrey. Again, that didn't mean he had nothing to do with her murder. But for now, he was put on the back burner. Detective Noble also tracked down and obtained DNA from one of Ray's cronies, his friend Timo T, who had helped steal Audrey's car. It wasn't him either. Detective Nopal continued to interview a lot of the original 1994 witnesses that had been spoken to by detectives in the aftermath of the murder. She tried to gather DNA samples from any of those who had not been eliminated. One person she tracked down and interviewed was the friend of Ray's that I just mentioned, Steve C. The one who said Ray became entangled with meth. His phone number was found on a post it in Audrey's apartment and he called Detective Stefan two days after Audrey's funeral, inquiring what was going on with the investigation. When questioned, he apparently tried to minimize his contract with Audrey. He'd said he'd been in Audrey's apartment just once for about half an hour a week before her death. He stopped by to check on her and Alex. DNA had never been collected from Steve C. When Detective Noble interviewed Steve C. Decades later, he behaved very oddly on the phone. He said he'd be happy to give a DNA sample. But then when he arrived for his in person interview, he stammered, shifted in his seat and said he'd only ever been in Audrey's kitchen. And he refused to give a DNA sample. He denied having anything to do with her murder, but came across as belligerent. He also admitted that he was angry at Audrey because Ray, quote, was the father and she was playing custody games when Ray had a right to see his son. End quote. Detective Nopel's notes say that Steve C. Quote, came across as a suspect on every level. In the end, he refused to give a DNA sample. Detective Nopal had to obtain a search warrant to get one from him. It eliminated him and showed she moved on down her list. By 2016, the list of men eliminated by DNA grew to nearly 20. Okay, let's talk about some updated DNA testing. The last testing done on the case had been done in 2004. Twelve years had elapsed and Detective Noble wanted to try again. A lot of stuff was missing. For example, they no longer had the necklace that was around Audrey's neck, which had been released to her family. But Detective Nopel noted that Audrey's fingernail scrapings and the two hairs found on her abdomen had never been processed for DNA. And they still had those. The two hairs had been examined microscopically back in the 90s and were found to be inconsistent with Scott H's. But more in depth analysis was called for. So Detective Nopal submitted to Laura Kelly of the WSP Crime Lab the following items in November of 2016. Audrey's fingernail clippings. The gauze swab of the blood smear found on her knee. The swab of blood from the spot under the kitchen table without hair and. And the swab of blood under the kitchen table with hair. The loose hairs from Audrey's abdomen. The results were as follows. The blood drops under the kitchen table were Audrey's blood. The two hairs on Audrey's abdomen were her own. But an unknown male STR profile was obtained from skin cells detected in Audrey's right hand fingernail scrapings. The profile belonged to the same person whose semen was in her vagina. Individual A. Well, that clinched it. Audrey had scratched the hell out of someone who was attacking her. The same person who had left his semen inside her in August 2017. Additional testing was conducted on the comforter Audrey was lying on atop her waterbed when she was found. When lab analyst Ms. Kelly used an alternative light source on the comforter, five separate stains were noted on the surface of the comforter. And the location of one of those stains was very important because it was right under Audrey's pelvis. Laura Kelly's Washington State Patrol Lab report dated August 24, 2017 was crucial to this case. It stated that semen was detected on comforter stains C and D. Stain C was located on the edge of the comforter away from Audrey's body. But stain D was located in the center of the comforter. This was the one under Audrey's pelvic area. Both stains were extracted for their DNA content to separate sperm fraction from other cellular material. Non sperm fraction. I'll bet Detective Noble just about fell out of her chair when she read that the DNA profile from sperm fraction of stain C, the one on the edge of the comforter, matched the DNA profile of Scott H. The estimated probability of selecting an unrelated individual at random from the US population with a matching profile was 1 in 2.4 non alien. So old Scott H's sperm was on the comforter with dead Audrey on it. But the report continued to address stain D, which was a DNA mixture. Some of the DNA was Audrey's own. This is a quote from the report. The partial profile obtained from the sperm fraction matches the previously generated male DNA profile obtained from the sperm fraction of the vaginal swabs designated as individual A. Stain D was the semen stain on the comforter that was under Audrey's hips. That semen came from individual A. The same man had left DNA inside Audrey on her comforter, under her genital area and under her fingernails. The updated DNA profile was entered into CODIS where no hits emerged. One last little bit from Ms. Kelly's report. An unknown STR profile was obtained from the right knee gauze where Audrey had blood on her knee. This profile was not consistent with individual A. After the 2017 testing confirmed that the Vancouver PD had DNA from three places linked to a very strong male suspect, individual A, the case kind of stayed in limbo until IGG came onto the scene. And when it did, the VPD jumped at the opportunity to identify Audrey's killer. At long last, in 2018, Detective Corporal Neil Martin of the Vancouver PD received approval to send the individual a DNA sample to Parabon Nanolabs. Parabon's partner lab produced a SNP profile of the suspect and utilized that to generate a snapshot phenotype report indicating that he was a white male with very fair skin, green or hazel eyes, blond or brown hair, not black, and a few freckles as is common. They produced computer generated images of him at age 25 and age 50. Both show the suspect with a longer, thinner face and a relatively pointy chin. Then Parabon commenced its IGG analysis. Okay, wait. How amazing is it that they used IgG to solve a murder that happened in the Family Tree apartment complex with that name? This was going to be a piece of cake. They uploaded the unknown suspect's DNA profile into GEDmatch. Nope. Sadly, no cake. Parabon's report was dated October 22, 2018. The top match initials. Lea shared 194 centimorgans of DNA with the suspect, consistent with his second cousin, or a second cousin once removed. But of course, Elie A was adopted. It was decided to contact lea through his GEDmatch kit manager who was his wife. Parabon reached out to them and the couple was very cooperative with what they were told. Only was A law enforcement investigation, Lea knew the identity of his biological parents and relayed that and other family tree information to the genealogist, allowing her to flesh out the tree. The next top match was a woman named BFN who shared only 47 centimorgans of DNA with the suspect, likely a third cousin once removed to fourth cousin once removed. The rest of the matches were very, very low Numbers. Using the GEDmatch matrix function, the top 20 matches were compared to one another. There were no close genetic networks noted, meaning that the top 20 matches did not share significant amounts of DNA with each other and no genealogical relationships could be determined for the identified GEDmatch matches, with the exception of Lea and BFM, who turned out to be on different paternal branches of the suspect's family tree and were related by marriage. Family trees were constructed for many of the suspect's matches, although several were adopted or of unknown parentage. The genealogist noted that the families of many of the matches originated from Indiana, the home of Lea's biological family, with some others from Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky. Several of the matches also showed evidence of fairly recent migration to the US to try to identify the second cousins of Lea, which should include the suspect, the genealogist billed out Lea's tree to its great grandparent level. This was the marriage of Everett A, born 1870, and somebody's name who I cannot pronounce whose last name is Koljik, born 1871. Both great grandparents were born in the Netherlands and immigrated to the United States. One of their children who was not a grandparent to the top match was almost certainly the grandparent of the suspect. This turned out to be his paternal grandmother, matila achien, born 1899. Building out this tree of the second top match bfn, the genealogist had to go farther back because of her more distant relationship to the suspect. She found the ancestral marriage of ebenezer Herbert, born 1770, and Mary Magdalena Wallach, born 1773. They were great, great great grandparents to Bfn and their granddaughter Catherine Harbert, born 1839, married a man named Milton Knapp. This name, Knapp, caught the eye of the genealogist because it also appeared in the descendancy tree built down from the ancestors of match number one. Catherine Harbor's great grandson, Charles Lowell Knapp, born 1929, was the son of match number one's grandmother's sister, Matilda Etchen. It all came together in this triangulation of the suspect's paternal grandmother and paternal grandfather's family lines. The person named by Parabon as the potential suspect was a second cousin to match number one, Lea and a fourth cousin to match number two, bfn. Now I'd like to point out that this is where the importance of geographic location figures into IGG analysis. Of course, the Parabon genealogists knew they were looking for a suspect who who'd been in Vancouver, Washington in 1994 and the members of these massive family trees. Many of the unions in the descendancy work resulted in double digits. Numbers of children were all rooted in Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and other locations far removed from Washington. All but one, Charles Lowell Knapp was the only one of the children of Ernest Ray Knapp and Matilda Attien to move from his native Indiana to Washington state. The genealogists could not find any other descendants of the Harbert Wallach or Achen Koljik ancestral couples who had relocated to Washington or Oregon. Not only that, Charles Lowell Knapp and his wife Dorothy Laureen Brannan lived in Vancouver. Charles was very likely too old to have been the person who raped and strangled Audrey, but he and his wife Dorothy had two sons, both of whom grew up in the Vancouver area. One of the sons of I'm calling Clayton and the other I'm calling Richard K. Both of these sons had an established second cousin relationship to the top match Lea and an established fourth cousin once removed relationship to the second match BFN. Of those two sons, Parabon's report posited that the Vancouver PD should prioritize Richard Kay, born in 1962 in Vancouver. His brother Clayton had no known criminal record and was a retired emt. But Richard Clay lived in Vancouver at the time of Audrey's murder and had a very interesting record. This is the end of part one of the case of Audrey Haline. Part two is available right now.
Host: AbJack Entertainment
Podcast Theme: The use of investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) to solve cold cases, with a particular focus on understanding not just "who" but also "why" these crimes occurred.
In this first of a two-part series, the hosts dive into the harrowing and complex unsolved murder of Audrey Hoellein (née Annette Haline), who was found strangled in her Vancouver, Washington apartment in July 1994. The episode meticulously explores the crime scene, the ensuing investigation, the multitude of male suspects in Audrey's circle, and the role of forensic evidence—most notably DNA—in both focusing the investigation and, for years, frustrating its resolution. The episode concludes as the narrative approaches the present day’s breakthroughs through investigative genetic genealogy.
"Bruises around her throat pointed to strangulation. Lividity was apparent in Audrey's posterior side, consistent with her position. This indicated that she had not been moved recently and had been lying on her back consistently for some time."
(Host, 04:05)
"From what I read about Audrey, it seems she was somewhat immature and insecure and craved male attention to validate herself. This resulted in her spending time with a lot of different men and that in turn made for a quite complex investigation."
(Host, 10:00)
"Scott H. gave investigators every impression throughout the interview that he was being deceptive."
(Host, 17:39)
"She told friend Tammy M. and her cousin Kathy Bullion that if she died that summer, make sure police looked at Ray, even if it looked like a suicide."
(Host, 35:45)
"No one matched to the unsubbed DNA, and Audrey's case stagnated...all investigative leads had been exhausted."
(Host, 50:11)
"[Parabon's report] indicated that he was a white male with very fair skin, green or hazel eyes, blond or brown hair...They produced computer generated images of him at age 25 and age 50."
(Host, 60:50)
Scott H. on DNA evidence:
"I guess we will find out if I stuck my peter in her. I don't think I'd be that stupid. Let's hope not, anyway."
(Scott H., as recounted by host at 20:25)
Detective reflection on the investigation:
"I hate to talk about investigators getting tunnel vision, but it happens. And in this case, Scott was the only person in the sights of the investigators."
(Host, 26:24)
On the complexity of the case:
"I think it may be one of the more complex investigations I've seen in terms of sheer number of potential suspects."
(Host, 44:56)
Investigative dead end frustration:
"This kind of shit must make the detectives want to pull their hair out."
(Host, 43:04)
This episode painstakingly reconstructs the failed early investigation into Audrey Hoellein's murder, highlighting detective missteps, the complex web of potential suspects, and the transformative impact of evolving forensic science. It sets the stage for the case's modern breakthrough using IGG, with the mystery of "Individual A" as the central throughline. Part 2, available immediately, picks up with the genealogical hunt for Audrey’s killer and the final unraveling of the case.