Loading summary
Transcript20 lines
- [00:01]
Jessica Bettencourt
Whether you're into unsolved mysteries, solved mysteries, or creating your own mysteries, Amazon Music's got millions of podcast episodes waiting. Just download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts ad free included with Prime.
- [00:17]
Narrator
Hey, want a cookie? Oh, I know you just ate, so you're craving something a little sweet. Besides, one cookie isn't gonna kill you. How about half? Just a bite. Bite it. Bite it.
- [00:30]
MIDI Health Sponsor
Bite it.
- [00:32]
Narrator
Food Noise isn't fair, but Mochi Health
- [00:34]
Amazon Music Sponsor
is your affordable glp. One source that puts you on a path to successful weight loss by quieting food noise.
- [00:40]
Narrator
Bite it.
- [00:40]
Mike Morford
Shh.
- [00:41]
Amazon Music Sponsor
Learn more@joinmochi.com Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists.
- [00:46]
Narrator
Results may vary.
- [00:47]
Mike Morford
It's estimated that at any given time, there are up to 90,000 missing persons. And that's just in the United States. Imagine if your loved one went missing. Is there anything that you wouldn't do to try and find them? This is Missing Persons and I'm your co host, Mike Morford. In every episode of Missing Persons, you'll hear about a person who disappeared and currently remains missing, as well as the efforts to find them. In some cases, there are clues to follow and leads to check on. In other cases, it's as if the person just vanished off the face of the earth. In each episode, you'll hear from someone that's desperately searching for that missing person. And whether they've been looking for 30 days or 30 years, the struggle to find answers is real. Will you join us and become part of the search for answers in these cases? If so, search for and subscribe to Missing Persons. Wherever you listen to podcasts, there are dozens of episodes available to binge on right now, and new episodes come out every other Saturday.
- [01:45]
Jessica Bettencourt
You're listening to dnaid brought to you by Abjec Entertainment. Be sure to check out some of the other great true crime podcasts from this network Network including the Murder in My Family, Missing Persons, Scene of the Crime, Zodiac Speaking Beyond Bizarre True Crime, Campus Killings, Below the Surface, and Killer Communications. All of these podcasts are available for you to binge on right now. Wherever you listen to podcasts, subscribe where you're listening to this podcast so you don't miss an episode.
- [02:27]
Mike Morford
Sam.
- [03:12]
Narrator
It was 1979. On the afternoon of Friday, January 26th, Sherry Elliott was worried her 16 year old daughter Kim hadn't come home to their house on Banjo Circle on the west side of Las Vegas after school. Now, I know what you're thinking. What 16 year old hasn't failed to come home sometime instead going to a friend's house, joy riding around or going for pizza with buddies and just losing track of time. But Sherry knew her daughter. She wasn't the type to take off on a whim. And Kim had only been supposed to spend an hour or two at school that morning, registering for classes for the new semester. Sherry herself had dropped her daughter off and who Kim should have been home by lunchtime at the latest because the two had an appointment together at the bank. Sherry chalked Kim's not being home up to her losing track of time and went back to work. But in the back of her mind, she was a little concerned. It wasn't like Kim to miss an appointment. In fact, her husband Ed, Sherry's stepfather, later said to the media about Kim, quote, you could set your watch with her. Sherry started calling around to Kim's friends houses, but no one had seen Kim since earlier that morning at school, Sherry and Ed went to the Las Vegas Police Department's substation closest to their house and filed a missing persons report on their daughter at 5:45pm Sherry felt strongly that something was wrong, and she reported this to the police officer who took down the report. Kim was described as 5 foot 4 with short brown wavy hair, brown eyes and braces. She was wearing a patchwork rabbit fur jacket over a white velour sweater and black blouse, rolled blue jeans and sneakers. It doesn't appear that Las Vegas police took this missing person's report all that seriously. After all, how many teens get into a little mischief, maybe run off for a bit with a boyfriend and turn up a few days later? But in this case, there actually was some circumstantial evidence that the teen might actually have run away. Ed admitted that he and Kim had had what he called a family spat the very night before she went missing. Police later would read in Kim's diary that the two had had a physical confrontation and that if it happened again, Kim wrote, she would run away. This did not help light a fire under investigators anyway. When Ed and Sherry filed the missing persons report at the station, Metro police told the concerned parents that they would broadcast the missing girl over police airwaves. But that's pretty much all they did. After two days of worry, on Sunday, January 29th, Ed marched into the Detectives Bureau and demanded an audience with some investig. He caused a scene and was ushered out. But later that day, two detectives from the juvenile division visited the couple at home and took down a report. Ed and Sherry told them that they had spoken to all of Kim's friends, and no one had seen or heard from her. Her friends were worried, and Sherry and Ed were worried, too. The detectives took some notes and collected Kim's diary after looking around her room and went away. That was on the 29th. On the 31st, the detectives spoke with Kim's boyfriend, Mike, who was a year older than Kim. Police records indicate that Mike contacted detectives who at first thought that Kim might have run away and been hiding out at his place. But Mike said Kim wasn't with him and he had some very important information for the investigators. It seemed he was the last person or one of the last persons with whom Kim had spoken. He helped significantly to narrow down what had happened to Kim and when. Here's what we know about the last few hours before Kim vanished. On that Friday morning, January 26, Kim's mom, Sherry, drove Kim and her friend Pam to school at 7:30am Kim was a sophomore at Western High School, located on Descator, a busy road in Las Vegas. By around 9:45am Kim and another friend, Mary W. Were done with what they needed to do to enroll in classes for the upcoming semester. They were free to go. They walked out of the school building and headed to the Dairy Queen, located at 115 N. Decatur Blvd. Right across the street from the Western High School football complex. The DQ was still closed, but both girls used the payphone outside to call for rides. Mary called her mom and Kim called her boyfriend, Mike. Mary's mom drove up to the dairy queen at 10:10am Mary got into the car, but first she offered to give Kim a ride home. Kim said, no thanks, Mike is coming to get me. I'll hang out here by the pay phone. And indeed, Mike told detectives that Kim had called him around 10am and asked him to pick her up at the Dairy Queen. He got in his car and headed over there. When Mike got to the dq, Mary had already been picked up and there was no sign of Kim either. Mike sat and waited, probably wondering whether there had been some kind of communication mix up. Sometime between 10:30 and 10:40, Mike, puzzled, called his own house. If he called Kim's house first and there was no answer, we just don't know. Both her parents were at work. Mike spoke to his guardian, a guy named James, and asked whether Kim had called. Nope, said James. No calls from Kim. Eventually, Mike gave up waiting and went home. Kim never showed up at the Dairy Queen, and later that day, when she failed to show up at home after school, her mom reported her missing. On January 31, detectives received a Phone call from a witness named Marilyn. She told them that she had found something that should be returned to its rightful owner. It was a blue gym bag. Marilyn said she had found it lying literally in the road in the southbound travel lane of Decatur Boulevard near Charleston around noon on January 26th. When she opened the bag, she found it contained school books and gym clothes. But it also contained a handbag which had an ID in it that identified the owner as a Kimberly Bryant. Marilyn had tried to call Kim's family's house phone after looking up the phone number in the phone book, but no one had answered. She left a message which Ed and Sherry received. When they got home from the police station that day. Ed drove over to Marilyn's and picked up the bag. They had told the juvenile detectives about the bag during the investigators home visit two days later on Sunday. Of course, the finding of the bag was a very ominous sign because now Kim really seemed to be missing. Based on where the bag was found in the roadway, it seemed to detectives that the bag might have been thrown out a car window. Or even more frightening, it could have been dropped in the roadway as its owner was grabbed off the sidewalk and forced into a car. But they moved away from this theory to an even more bizarre one. Since Marilyn had found the bag in the middle of the busy road at noon, it did not seem that the bag had been there the whole time. Hundreds of cars used that road every hour. Someone else would have moved it out of the way long before Marilyn found it. The timing led them to believe that the killer had the bag in his car and threw it out the window as he passed that way. After killing Kim and hiding her body. As detective Bob Hilliard explained, quote, we think the suspect brought the bag back about an hour and a half later. Because it was found at noon in the travel lane, it doesn't seem feasible it would have stayed there any length of time. Las Vegas police now had a legitimately concerning missing persons case on their hands. Nearly a week after the girl went missing, Detectives started interviewing Kim's friends, family, and boyfriend in earnest to try to determine whether she might have left with someone. They interviewed the employees at the Dairy Queen and canvassed the area to see whether anyone had seen anything. After all, it was broad daylight in a very busy downtown thoroughfare, and someone must have seen something. By a week out, with no word from Kim at all and no sightings of her, Police finally stated that they suspected foul play. The department held a press conference on February 2nd to inform the public of Kim's missing status and to ask people to call in any information at all that could help them find her. The media broadcast Kim's photo and a tip line phone number, but it didn't help. Some calls came in, but none of them led to Kim. Ed and Sherry were left waiting, wondering and worrying. Desperate. They even consulted a psychic, looking for answers. On February 20, around 4:30 in the afternoon, three young teenage boys were shooting BB guns in a deserted area of Las Vegas. This location was consistently referred to as a desert area in contemporary articles. It was located off Power Line Road, north of Charleston Boulevard. The kids, Alan, Larry and Mike, were firing off their guns and hacking around under the power lines when they saw something in a gully with brush piled on top. One of the boys thought it looked like a discarded wig. But on closer inspection, they saw that sticking out from under a pile of leaves, branches and a piece of cardboard was a hand, a woman's hand. The boys jumped on their bikes. I can't help but think of the movie Stand by Me and hailed a cop car patrolling at West Charleston Boulevard and Buffalo Avenue. They led its driver, Officer T. Harbor, to the place where they had seen the body lying face down, covered with debris. They counted eight utility poles north of Charleston and turned into the wash area on foot 400 yards to the east. Sure enough, Officer Harbour saw what the boys were talking about. This directly from the incident report, quote, Officer Harbour observed the hand of a white female who had been concealed under bushes and brushed. Officer Harbour also could see brown hair covered by a piece of cardboard and a pair of Levi jeans across the female's face and noted she was naked from the waist down. Officer Harbour observed other clothing at the scene. A white pullover sweater, a black silk blouse and blue tennis shoes. A patchwork rabbit fur coat lay on the ground nearby. These clothing items were exactly what Kim had been described to be wearing on the last day she was seen. Officer harbor notified the homicide unit the area was a crime scene. Kim's grandmother happened to be watching TV when the local news channel aired an update that a body had been found in the desert north of the West Charleston Boulevard power station. She called over to Ed and Sherry and told them the news. They waited with bated breath and then came the knock on the door. Ed later said, quote, I think we'd known all along that Kim was dead. We were trying to kid ourselves.
- [13:40]
Amazon Music Sponsor
For everyone who solves crime from their couch knows more about forensics than their own job and has trust issues with small town sheriffs. Amazon Music's millions of podcast episodes are calling. Just download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite True Crime podcasts ad free included with Prime.
- [13:59]
MIDI Health Sponsor
This podcast is supported by MIDI Health. Are you in midlife? Feeling dismissed, unheard or just plain tired of the old health care system? You're not alone. For too long, women's serious midlife health issues have been trivialized, ignored and met with a just deal with it attitude. Many of us have been made to feel ashamed or forgotten. In fact, even today, 75% of women seeking care for menopause and perimenopause issues are left entirely untreated. But here's the powerful it's time for a change. It's time for miti. MITI is not just a healthcare provider, it's a women's telehealth clinic founded and supported by world class leaders in women's health. What sets MIDI apart? We are the only women's telehealth brand covered by major insurance companies, making high quality, expert care accessible and affordable. Our clinicians provide one on one face to face consultations where they truly listen to your unique needs. We offer a full range of holistic, data driven solutions from hormonal therapies and weight loss protocols to lifestyle coaching and preventative health guidance. This isn't one size fits all care. This is care uniquely tailored for you. At miti, you will join our patients who feel seen, heard and prioritized. You will find that our mission is clear to help all women thrive in midlife, giving them access to the health care they deserve. Because we believe midlife isn't the middle at all. It is the beginning of your second act. Ready to feel your best and write your second act script? Visit joinmitty.com today to book your personalized insurance covered virtual visit. That's joinmitty.com MIDI the Care Women Deserve
- [15:58]
Narrator
an autopsy was performed on Kim by the Clark County Medical examiner, aptly named Dr. James Clark on February 21 at 1:45pm when her body was brought in, just as it was found, she still had one sock on. Her shirt and velour sweater were pushed up and her bra was ripped open between the cups. Dr. Clark determined that Kim had been killed with numerous blunt force blows to the head. The manner of death was homicide. Her time of death was undetermined. There was evidence on Kim's body that she had fought hard against her attacker and that she had scratched him. Kim had also been sexually assaulted. All of Kim's clothing was found on her body except her jeans which were draped over her. Her jacket found nearby and her underpants, which were not located but missing from her body according to her family, were a pearl pinky ring and a brass bracelet with the words Ding Dong inside of it. Also, Kim's gold Ronson Cobra lighter, which she carried even though it didn't work, was missing as well. It would provide a significant clue for investigators many years later. Let's talk about who Kim Was Kim Danielle Bryant was born on August 23, 1962 in Las Vegas when her mom married Ed. Kim had siblings Edward and Lisa. In her blended family, Kim was universally described as super friendly, someone who was always smiling. She had lots of different friends rather than one bestie. She was known as a very active girl who loved to do things like take disco dancing classes and go roller skating. She was also involved in the Special Olympics where she was a volunteer. All the young people who knew Kim agreed on three she would not have run away, she would not have accepted a ride from a stranger, and no one could think of anyone who would want to hurt her. Kim's death was truly shocking to the students at Western High. Knowledge that the sweet and friendly 16 year old had been grabbed off the street and beaten to death was too much for some of the kids who admitted to being really scared. A funeral was held for Kim at Paradise Valley Chapel. She lay in a blue coffin adorned with pink, yellow and red floral arrangements. But it was closed casket and Ed and Sherry had not been permitted to see Kim's body at the morgue. It was too battered and bruised for parental eyes to view. She was buried at Valley View Memorial park, but her parents always felt that oddly, they weren't 100% sure it was really her in there since they hadn't seen her body with their own eyes. At Kim's body dump site, police found some items that they kept as holdback information to be used in questioning potential suspects. And what they found led them to suspect that possibly two men were involved in what had been done to Kim. They found one empty can and one empty bottle, both of the same brand of beer. They were located about 70 yards from the body and they appeared to crime scene investigators to have been out there for some time, perhaps longer than Kim had, but they were collected anyway. Crime scene techs also noted tire tracks that led to a spot right near the body, leading investigators to believe that they had come from the suspect's vehicle. Police quickly came around to the theory that Kim had indeed been abducted in a vehicle. Detectives William Holland, Fred McGowan and Bob Hilliard believed she had been forced Into a vehicle against her will at the Dairy Queen sometime between 10:10am when Mary was picked up, and 10:30am when Mike arrived. Hilliard said, we are seeking help from the public. We are interested in talking with anyone who may have seen something as they were driving by or in the general vicinity of the Dairy Queen. Hilliard debunked earlier reports that there was an eyewitness to Kim's abduction. There had been rumors that she was seen getting into a black jeep, but Hilliard denied that. We wish we knew what kind of vehicle it was, but we just don't know. He said he later reflected in an interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal, quote, we had witnessed statements about different vehicles. One of them was a four wheel drive jeep or SUV of some type. A couple of guys in it seemed talking to her. That was it. No description. All we had was maybes and could bes. The fact is that a black jeep was seen parked near the Dairy Queen around the time that Kim vanished. Detectives managed to run down the jeep and its occupants and stated publicly that they did not feel they were involved and Kim was never in that vehicle. But police also learned from Mary that Kim had had what they described as an altercation outside the Dairy Queen. Two guys had pulled up and offered some profanities out the window of their car at the two girls, and Kim gave it right back to them. Detective Hillier described the incident to the Review journal with, quote, immediately prior to the kidnapping, she was harassed by two subjects in an old blue Chevy. They had a verbal confrontation with the girl as they passed by as she attempted to cross Decatur. But whether that was involved in the kidnapping, we don't know. What they did know or suspected anyway, was how Kim ended up where she did. Again, from detective Hilliard, she was taken up the expressway and then through the Spruill Rainbow housing tract where we subsequently found her body. Note that detective Hilliard was in error when he described the color of the Chevy to the media. The car was actually described by Mary as a gray 56 or 57 sedan with a raised rear and some visible gray or white primer spots on the paint. A large box of some kind was in the black window. Mary noted investigators had differing theories on when exactly Kim was killed. Initially, they said they believed she was slain on the day she was abducted. But months later, they acknowledged that they weren't sure and they felt it possible she had been kept alive for days before being killed. Detective Bob Hilliard said, quote, from the evidence found at the crime scene, we cannot definitely establish she was killed the day she was kidnapped. We don't know. The only one who would be able to tell us that is the murderer. But based on what we now know about this guy's M.O. i'd bet that Kim Bryant was dead within two hours of her abduction. Police followed up on what they described as a flood of tips from the public and ran them all down. They claimed that some of them resulted in some, quote, very promising new leads. But Las Vegas was in the midst of a homicide epidemic. By the end of March 1979, there had already been 34 murders in Clark County. Detectives were overwhelmed. Kim's case was just one of the now three dozen cases that had to be worked, and that was just in the first quarter alone. Kim's parents noted this in a letter to the Clark County Commission chair, saying that the lack of manpower had hurt their daughter's investigation. The letter read in part, quote, we knew she was not a runaway and told the police so, but we were told that Metro simply was not staffed to immediately start an investigation. We wonder just how many murderers will go free in Clark county simply because the Metro police are not staffed to properly take care of the situation. By March 25, Kim's case was already being considered potentially unsolvable. Commander Eric Cooper, the head of the LVMPD Detectives Bureau, said of Kim's case at the time to the Review Journal, quote, I have a personal opinion that in the Kim Bryant case, the only way we're going to catch the murderer is if someone snitches him off. Commander Bryant acknowledged that the overworked investigators just didn't have time to follow up on every lead that came across their desks. There were just too many cases. In June, Secret Witness, a group that facilitated anonymous tips in unsolved cases, offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who provided information leading to the arrest and indictment of Kim's killer. Calls and tips failed to lead anywhere. August 23rd rolled around the day that Kim would have turned 17. Her mom, Sherry, still phoned detectives weekly looking for answers. Detective John Silbaugh had taken on the case, partnering with Detective Hilliard, and he would still be around when it was solved. Decades later, in honor of Kim's 17th birthday, Sherry wrote a letter to the Review Journal saying, quote, I cannot shop for her birthday presents. I cannot have a cake made. There will be no party without her smiling face. What can I do? I will place her favorite roses on a cold gray marble stone. The detective said that Kim's remained one of their priority cases, and they Would never quit working it. Then a lead came in after two girls students at Western High saw the August expose in the Review Journal in observance of Kim's birthday. The girls classmates of Kim's came into the police station after talking things over with their parents. They told the investigators that three days before Kim's abduction, they were in the high school parking lot having lunch when two grubby looking hippie type guys with long hair, as they would later be referred to by the detective, around 20 years old, drove up and tried to get the girls in their car by offering them some jewelry. The girls didn't see any jewelry and smartly refused. The guys got mad and drove off quickly. What was interesting about this was that the car the guys were in fit the description of the car that Kim had exchanged words with right before she vanished. It was a dark gray Chevy with lighter colored primer spots and a large wood grain speaker in the back. But this time the girls observed that the car had Nevada tags and they got a good look at the guys inside. They were able to agree on a composite sketch of the car's passenger, which was released to the media with a plea for information. All officers were issued the drawing as well, which showed a doughy white guy with long blond hair and droopy eyes. It was a long shot. Detectives admitted these guys had had an eight month head start. But within a day or 2, the LVMPD had received between 70 and 100 calls from members of the public with tips on the identity of the guy in the Chevy. And another eyewitness also came forward after reading the August expose in the paper. This man has not been named, but was described in the Review Journal as an older prominent businessman in the community who had not heard about Kim's murder until he saw the newspaper. And when he did, he went to police and said that he believed he had possibly witnessed her abduction. At the time, he thought he was seeing a high school prank. He was able to tell police details that convinced them that he actually had seen Kim being kidnapped. To this day, police believe that it was likely that this man did see Kim being taken. Although of course they can't be 100% certain. Let's talk about some suspects. Investigators became interested in a man named Bobby Thomas. This 37 year old man had been stabbed to death in the desert just a day after Kim vanished on January 27. And the man who killed him, an ex con who had served 10 years in prison until 1978, told police that the dead guy, Thomas, was involved in her murder. This ex con, Kim Fuller, AKA Ronnie Lee Fain, said that he killed Thomas because Thomas bragged about raping and killing a teenage girl in the desert the day before, breaking some sort of unspoken prison code of silence. And Thomas had a record in Las Vegas for statutory rape mayhem in the desert. A great website devoted to Las Vegas crime stories reports that Thomas had previously been convicted in the rape of his teenage sister in law as well as an assault on a young woman stranded by the side of the road. Fain took two polygraphs and passed which showed that he actually did believe that Thomas was involved and had killed him. A little detective work discovered that Thomas had indeed taken a girl into the desert on the 26th, the same day as Kim's abduction, and tried to rape her. But he failed and ended up letting her go after apologizing. How nice of him. He might have drunkenly rambled on to Feign about a rape and murder, but he never said the girl's name or mentioned specific details. His Jeep was not the vehicle that the businessman witness had seen Kim getting pulled into. There was zero actual evidence linking Thomas to Kim and he didn't kill her. Fain got life in prison for stabbing Thomas to death. And another lead went cold. For those of you who are wondering, both Kim's boyfriend Mike and her stepdad Ed were ruled out by police as suspects early on. Kim's case was quickly believed to be the work of someone unfamiliar to her. In March 1980, with Kim's case ice cold, there was another attack on a young girl that had such similarities to Kim's case that detectives acknowledged that they were considering whether the two cases were related. A female 15 year old Bonanza High student who astonishingly is named and shown in photos in the papers, but who I am going to call by her initials, DM was found unconscious and in critical condition lying on the ground near the Charleston Boulevard power station. She was nude and had been beaten on the head with a rock and dragged across the desert. She had also been raped. Her clothing was found nearby, but her scout's key ring was missing. DM had last been seen walking alone near Garsai Junior High, located at Torrey Pines and Hyde Avenue at 6pm the evening before. It was believed that she had been abducted, attacked and beaten that evening and left unconscious on the ground all night. Of course, the details of this crime mirror Kim's almost exactly. And DM was dumped in nearly the exact same location. After a week, DM came out of her coma and survived. Her case remains unsolved. I for one believe that DM was likely a victim of the same offender as Kim. But so far this has not been proven. In 1980, a suspect emerged in Kim's case who would not only become the prime suspect, but who would completely dominate the case file for several years. It's fair to say that police at the time fully believed that they had their man and he was responsible for the abduction, rape and murder of Kim Bryant. There was a lot of circumstantial evidence of this, but there were also three other cases of sexual assaults and murders of girls and young women in the area that were similar to Kim's and seemed to form a pattern when this guy, who was accused of murdering women in more than one state and was suspected of murdering dozens of, hit Las Vegas law enforcement radar. These four similar cases, including Kim's, were believed to be connected and attributable to him. I'm talking about Stephen Peter Morin, who was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for a time. Detective Hilliard first came across Morin in December 1980, but he had no idea who he was. As Morin was using another name, here's what happened. A deputy sheriff named Larry Reeves from St. George, Utah called up the Las Vegas Metro Homicide Division and told Hillier that they had found a body in the desert. It was a young woman who was identified as 19 year old Cheryl Daniels of Las Vegas. And he was calling because it was the second Vegas native who had been found murdered in Washington County, Utah. Susan Bellote had been found three miles from Cheryl just a few months earlier. Let's take a quick look at these Las Vegas victims found in Utah. 18 year old Susan Belote had gone missing around 5pm on January 16, 1980 after leaving work at a Las Vegas dry cleaners. This was at a shopping center at the corner of Bonanza Road and Eastern Avenue. She was found on May 24 fully clothed at the bottom of a desert wash with a large rock on top of her chest. She was decomposed but was believed to have been either strangled or had her throat cut. The coroner believed she had been redressed after she was killed. Susan wasn't identified for nearly six months. Cheryl Daniels was a 20 year old Las Vegas woman who was kidnapped from the parking lot of the Alpha Beta grocery store on Rainbow Boulevard at Spring Mountain Road. This was at 12:30am on June 27, 1980. She and her boyfriend had driven to the grocery store and he ran inside while she waited in their Jeep. When her boyfriend came out of the store The Jeep had been moved 150ft and Cheryl was gone. She was found by hikers on December 13, raped and murdered and dumped naked in Hell Hole Canyon in Washington County. Her body was placed between rocks and covered with brush. Cheryl's cause of death was a through and through gunshot to the head from a.38 caliber or larger weapon. She was missing her clothes and some of her jewelry, but still wore a necklace with a medallion and ring. She was identified with dental records. Even though the causes of death were different, Utah officials suspected that Cheryl's and Susan's cases might be related. Both Vegas women were found in the desert near St. George, each lying about 1.5 miles from I15. They were 3 miles apart, and when they found Cheryl, they also found a clue as to who murdered the two women 300 yards away from Cheryl's body. Detectives combing the area found some things and one was a roll of 4 inch wide gray duct tape and the other was literally a jackpot of information about the killer. He had dropped his wallet and it contained the a JCPenney credit card, a Valley bank card, a Nevada fish and Game license, multiple receipts and a Supreme Court photo ID. All bore the name of Robert F. Generoso. On December 18, 1980, Detectives Hilliard and Mackey tracked down Generoso's wife, a teacher at her home in Las Vegas. I'm calling her by her initial s. S said her husband had left a few months earlier and was living in an apartment on South Decatur Boulevard. That certainly rang a bell in the Kim Bryant case. S told the detective she and Robert Generoso had been married three years. He worked as a painter and insulation installer. He drove a red Ranchero with a camper shell, she told them, but he owned as many as three rancheros. She recalled that he told her his wallet had been stolen earlier that year. S also confirmed that her husband owned at least one gun. S said their husband had called her on December 3. He wanted to give her the keys to his apartment because he was leaving town as the pressure was too great. So they searched his apartment, which he had clearly left in a hurry, and found red stained jeans. But he had slipped out of their grasp and was in the wind. While Generoso eluded questioning, Metro police already had his prints on file from a drug arrest five months earlier. So they ran those prints to get some more information on him. This from the police report, quote On December 29, 1980, detectives had criminalist Richard Renner telefax Generosa's prints to Washington in Order to obtain a positive identification. On December 30th, detectives were contacted by FBI Agent Pac Markovich and were informed that Generosa was in fact Stephen Peter Morin. He was the subject of a federal UFAP warrant and was wanted out of the San Francisco police department for the sexual assault of a female dating from September 1976. Detectives learned from Generoso Moran's estranged wife s that her husband had taken on the name Robert Generoso after finding an obituary of a Connecticut man by that name who was about his own age when she had met him. He was using the name Bob Ireland. Now they knew that his use of aliases was intended to help him elude capture for the outstanding warrant in California. Okay, so what does all this have to do with Kim's case? Well, because he had dropped his wallet at Cheryl's dump site, Robert Generoso, AKA Stephen Morin, was now the prime suspect in Cheryl's case. And investigators believed Susan Belote was killed by the same perpetrator. And detectives soon tied together Kim's murder with those of Cheryl and Susan and also the attempted murder of the 15 year old sexual assault survivor. DM the first article linking Morin to Kim Bryant's case appeared in the journal Review in June of 1981. By then, police had been eyeing him in her murder for nearly half a year. Here's the lead from the Review Journal. On June 18, 1981, Metropolitan Police have overwhelming physical evidence to link a 44 year old Las Vegas man who may be connected with 20 to 30 killings of young women in three states to the slaying of Kim Bryant. They were talking about Morin, who had lived in Vegas under the pseudonym Robert Generoso from 1977 to 1980, living with his wife and working as a contractor and insulation installer. And this is pretty strong language. Clark county authorities said they had overwhelming evidence that Morin had killed Kim, A police source told the paper. But they had to find him to question him. As I said, Generoso, Morin was on the lam after ditching his wife and baby in splitting town. He already had warrants out for his arrest in San Francisco and now in Utah as well. Morin fled to Hawaii for a time and then to Texas. There he began to escalate and killed two young women in the Lone star state. The authorities there were on his tail and he was finally captured in December 1981 in Austin, Texas. His arrest ensued after he escaped a SWAT team that had descended on him in a San Antonio hotel room where he was holding a woman named Pam Jackson hostage. He got away by jumping out a bathroom window. He took another woman hostage in her car, but allowed the born again Christian woman he abducted to talk to him about the Bible and persuade him to take the bullets out of his gun. He let her go, knowing she would call the police and that was why he was arrested in an Austin bus station. He later credited this kidnap victim for his finding Jesus. By the time the cops caught up with him, Morin was wanted for questioning a connection with the murders of nine women in four states. First, he was charged in Texas with the December 1981 murder of Carrie Scott and also with the murder of another young woman he strangled there, Jana Bruce. He was still wanted in California and it was learned that he had been arrested there for stomping his girlfriend's cat to death and then mailing it to her in a box. Morin became known as the Chameleon because he always was changing his appearance and identity. And once in captivity, he apparently decided to change his entire character. Morin quickly avowed that he became a Christian and said he wanted to repent his sins. He actually pleaded guilty to capital murder at his indictment for the Kerry Scott shooting, fully aware that he could be put to death. Just a little more about Morin, who is believed to have many more victims than those he was eventually convicted of killing. The arrest warrant in San Francisco that Morin eluded by changing his name related to a very violent and disturbing 1976 crime. Morin lured a 14 year old girl, a friend of his sister's, to his apartment. As she was reaching into a closet, he hit her and held a knife to her. Morin tied her ankles to a pole, placed between her legs and suspended her with a hook above a bed. With her head covered in thick gray duct tape, he orally raped her and then raped her vaginally and anally. And ice cubes were involved. I'm not going to go into the details, but oddly this is the second case I've covered recently involving ice cubes. The girl eventually convinced Morin to let her go. He dropped her off near her home and she reported the crime. Okay, so that's Morin in a nutshell. So now you're asking what does he have to do with our victim, Kim Bryant? Remember that I said that? Las Vegas homicide detectives lumped Kim's case in with the two strongly suspected Moran victims, Cheryl and Susan. They also considered the 15 year old sexual assault victim who had survived DM to be another victim of the same perpetrator investigators put those four eggs firmly into the Morin basket. Let's take a look at the evidence that Morin had killed Kim as well as these other girls. All four victims, including Kim, lived in western Las Vegas, as did Morin, who was using the name Robert Generoso. Remember, I said that at one point he even lived on Decatur, where Kim was last seen. All four attacks took place in 1979 and 1980, when Warren was living in the city and all victims were found in the desert. Investigators were able to connect Morin to some of the victims by linking him to businesses where he worked or shopped that were also frequented by his victims. For example, after Morin was already on their radar, Police interviewed an 18 year old longtime friend of Cheryl's, a woman named Lori. And something Lori said raised their eyebrows. Laurie said that Cheryl had been seeing a new boyfriend, a guy she had met at Playland Roller Rink. And then this. Laurie also knew Kim Bryant, and she told police that Kim also liked to go roller skating. At Playland Roller Skating Rink. Police followed up with Kim's mom and stepdad, who told them a story that at the time of her disappearance, should have been more significance to investigators than it was. About two weeks before Kim disappeared, Kim had asked her mom whether she could go out on a date with a guy who she had met at the skating rink. He was a really good roller skater, Kim said. Her mom said that she could only go out with this guy if he came to the house and met her parents first. A few days later, a man named Joe, who looked to be Italian and said he was 24 years old, arrived at the house driving a red vehicle. He introduced himself to Sherry and Ed and then picked up Kim and took her to the skating rink. But he didn't bring her home. Instead, Kim's ex boyfriend, Preston brought her home. Police interviewed Preston in December 1980 to find out what all this was about. Preston, who was 19, told them that he saw Kim at Playland Roller Rink about four days before she disappeared. She told him that she had come there with a guy, but that he was bugging her and she was afraid to go home with him. She asked Preston if he would take her home. Instead, Preston saw the guy that Kim was talking about. He was a white male in his 20s, 5 foot 9, 150 to 160 pounds, with dark hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. When he and Kim got into Preston's car and drove away, the man followed them in a red ranchero with a white camper shell. Preston noticed that the vehicle had silver chrome spike wheels that were sunk in and were painted gold on the inside. Kim's date, Joe, followed them driving in an erratic and crazy manner. Kim was frightened. Preston managed to evade the guy by speeding and making sudden turns. Kim was afraid that Joe would be waiting for her when she arrived at home. But he wasn't. Another friend of Kim's backed up this story. Her friend Pam Blackburn had gotten a ride to school with Kim in Kim's mom's car. On the last day Kim was seen, January 26, Pam told police that Kim had told her she had a problem at the skating rink with a guy who was, quote, real macho. So to recap, Kim had a date at the roller rink with an older guy with dark hair who drove a red Ranchero just like Robert Generoso, who had met one of his subsequent victims at this same roller rink. And that was just the beginning of the circumstantial evidence that Morin had killed Kim. Remember the gold lighter that didn't work that Kim always carried and that was missing from her things when she was found? Well, Generoso, AKA Morin's wife S. Told investigators that her husband had come home one day and in either 78 or 79 with an expensive looking gold lighter that he said he had found. She couldn't recall what make it was, but she did recall that it did not work. Another thing Sherry and Ed had told detectives that Kim always wore a thin macrame belt whenever she wore the white velour top she was wearing on the day she was killed. The belt was missing from her room and was never found, so it was believed that the killer took it. Police raided a storage unit Moran rented on Valley View Boulevard in Vegas. In it, they found a 56 inch long narrow women's macrame belt with four beads on it. His wife, S. Did not recognize it. When she was shown photos of the belt found, Sherry said she could not be sure it was Kim's, but to detectives, it seemed like more than a coincidence. Police showed Preston, the ex who had driven Kim home from her nightmare date at the roller rink, a photo lineup that included Morin. Sure enough, Preston picked Morin out of the lineup as the man he saw with Kim that night. He also identified a photo of Morin's Ranchero as the vehicle the guy was driving. And there was more. The woman who was friends with both Cheryl and Kim, her name was Lori, also picked Morin's image out of a photo lineup that contained 20 men. Cheryl had introduced the guy in the photo to her as her new older boyfriend. Lori saw Cheryl and him together several times over the six weeks before Cheryl vanished, so she was pretty confident in her identification. So police were 100% sure Morin killed Cheryl. They had dated before she broke things off with him. His wife s told them he shopped at the same grocery store where Cheryl was last seen. In the parking lot, her friend picked him out of a lineup as the guy who had dated Cheryl. As for Susan, the other victim found in the Utah desert, she too could be linked to Morin. Susan had worked at the Jones Spring Mountain Animal Clinic. Morin and S, his wife had had their dog treated there one night while Susan was at work. After that, Morin started visiting the animal clinic regularly and police dug up information that he was casually seeing Susan. She disappeared four months later. There was no specific evidence linking Morin to the final crime Las Vegas police attributed to him, which was the abduction, assault and attempted murder of 15 year old DM. But from DM's things, a Scout's keychain was missing. Morin's wife s told police he had come home with a keychain with an S on it and told her he found it. When Morin was incarcerated in Texas, two investigators from Las Vegas Metro Homicide traveled to Texas to talk to him in custody, hoping to get answers once and for all about his connection to these four cases. But he refused to talk. The investigators left disappointed and empty handed, unable to close the cases of Cheryl, Susan, Kim and dm. Morin was eventually convicted and sentenced to death in Texas in April 1982 for the murders of Jana and Carrie. After the two death sentences were pronounced, Morin said to his attorney, now they've got me in both arms. Well, he would need a third because next he was sentenced to death in Colorado for the murder of Sheila Whelan, found strangled and raped in a golden motel room. By the time his execution date came around in 1985, Morin was ready to meet his maker. He told the judge not to allow anyone to intervene on his behalf, saying, I want to die on the date you set for me. Utah authorities had issued an arrest warrant for Morin for the murder of Cheryl Daniel, but decided not to extradite him. After he was sentenced to death in Texas and Colorado, Las Vegas authorities determined that they did not have sufficient evidence to charge him for the murders of Susan and Kim or for the attack on DM. During Morin's execution, medical technicians had to search for 40 minutes to locate a vein suitable to inject the lethal cocktail because Morin had ruined all his veins through his heavy drug use. He was finally pronounced dead at 12:55am on March 13, 1985. So that is the very sordid saga of Stephen Peter Morin. As it turns out, it's a good thing that Nevada authorities did not feel they had sufficient evidence to charge him for killing Kim Bryant. If they had, they might never have made the decision to perform forensic genealogy in her case. When they did, it showed that Morin was not involved at all. So if Kim's ex, Preston, was correct in his photo identification of Morin, then Kim had indeed been on a date with a sadistic serial killer just four days to two weeks before she ended up being abducted, raped and killed by another serial sexual predator. This seems very unlikely, and my source at the LVMPD believes that the Morin connection to Kim was exaggerated a bit in the push to connect her case to him. We will never know. For the record, it is now believed that Susan and Cheryl were definitely victims of Steven Peter Morin. Kim was not. And in my opinion, DM's assault was so incredibly similar to Kim's down to where the victims were found that I suspect she was the victim of the same predator as Kim, not Morin. But I'm getting ahead of myself. After Morin was executed, Kim's case was officially classified as a cold case homicide. It was reviewed by numerous detectives over the years, but would not be solved for another few decades.
- [49:23]
Jessica Bettencourt
Whether you're solving murders during breakfast, cracking cold cases on your commute, or playing amateur detective at bedtime, Amazon Music's got millions of podcast episodes waiting. Just download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite true crime podcasts ad free included with Prime.
- [49:46]
Narrator
Kim's case was dormant for decades. In fact, it was actually classified as a cold case by the LVMPD. In 2008, the Las Vegas Metro Police Crime Lab analyzed some of the physical evidence in the case of to try to obtain a DNA profile of her killer, but they were unsuccessful. Other than this, there was no movement on the case. Then, more than a decade later, in 2019, Las Vegas Metro Homicide Cold Case Unit investigator Terry Miller was assigned to the Bryant case after a tip. I have no details on this, but the department received a deathbed confession of sorts that had to do with the gym bag that the woman Marilyn found in the road after Kim's abduction. I'm extrapolating here after reading between the lines in some information I was given, but someone, either someone in Marilyn's family or Someone she confided in was facing death and decided to get something off his or her chest. The revelation was that Marilyn had not found the gym bag at all. In fact, she found Kim Bryant's gym bag in the bedroom of her 15 year old son. Marilyn decided to tell the police that she found the bag and told them of the location in the roadway near the abduction site. This was not true and we don't know the place where the son who hasn't been named actually found almost certainly was not near the high school as it made no sense for Kim's killer to revisit that spot and toss the bag out there. After killing Kim he would have wanted to distance himself from that location as much as possible. So Detective Miller was very intrigued by the information that a guy who was a teenager in 1980 had been in possession of Cam's gym bag. He was interviewed and denied having anything to do with it and didn't know why his mom had lied about it. They needed a way to eliminate him. So they turned to science. In January 2021, Metro PD forensic scientist Brianne Husby analyzed a clump of pubic hairs found in the combings taken from Cam's body. At autopsy she was able to analyze both epithelial cells and sperm cells found on the hair. Within the epithelial cells she detected a mixture of the DNA of two individuals, one of whom was male. As for DNA from the sperm cells, it was of course exclusively male. And consistent with the male DNA in the epithelial cells the lab was able to develop a male STR profile from the samples and enter it into codis. The profile generated no hits in the database but it did serve to eliminate the gym bag guy who gave a DNA sample. Detective Miller then requested the assistance of Othram Labs. Othram had recently solved a cold case homicide for Las Vegas Metro pd the Stephanie Isaacson case, which I hope to cover one day. And now with funding provided by Las Vegas based philanthropist Justin Wu, Othram went to work on the Bryant case. On January 28, 2021, Detective Miller was notified by Othram that they had obtained a genetic profile from the physical evidence. They recommended additional testing of items in evidence to confirm their findings. Within months, based on the sperm fraction and epithelial fraction recovered from Kim's body, Othram was able to give detectives the name of the man who they believed was either responsible or was a close relative of the person responsible for the abduction, sexual assault and murder of Kim Bryant. On September 28, 2021, Othram recommended that the detectives perform additional DNA testing of relatives of Johnny Blake Peterson. Peterson himself was dead. I'm not going to name most of the living relatives of Johnny Peterson who cooperated with the investigation, but some of the names are publicly available. Detective Miller determined that Peterson's father, Milton Peterson, was still alive and living in Cave Junction, Oregon. She contacted the Josephine County Sheriff's Department, and Detective Kyle Henrich obtained a search warrant for Milton Peterson's DNA. But when he arrived at the Cave Junction house, Milton's granddaughter, the suspect's niece, a woman named A. I'm using her initial, told them that Milton and his wife Mary weren't there. In fact, they didn't live there. They lived with Mary's son James. And she wasn't sure exactly where, but she said it could be Las Vegas. She gave the deputies a phone number for James Peterson. James was a stepbrother of the possible suspect, Johnny Blake Peterson. Detective Miller interviewed James on October 21, 2021. This directly from the police report. James Peterson stated he was the biological son of Mary Peterson and Milton Peterson was his stepfather. He stated he was caring for his parents who were temporarily living with him in his rv. According to James Peterson, he was the caregiver to both parents, which was also confirmed by A. Peterson when she spoke with Detective Henrich on October 27th. James gave his written consent for Detective Miller to take a buccal swab from Milton Peterson as James was his legal guardian. This is a quote from the investigative report. The confirmation sample from Milton was sent to the LVMPD DNA lab. And on November 22, 2021, Investigator Miller received positive confirmation. The DNA recovered from Kim Bryant's pubic hair during her initial autopsy matched the DNA of Johnny Blake Peterson. Okay, so who was Johnny Blake Peterson? Well, we don't know a whole lot about him. He was born on September 16, 1960 in Las Vegas as John Blake Peterson. His parents were Milton Peterson and Elizabeth Ann McCaslin who died in 2013. A few details about Peterson's family tree are very confusing. One, Milton, his father was married a whole bunch of times. I could find five wives. According to records on ancestry, he got married to one of them, Elizabeth, known as Betty, in November 1959. This was Johnny Blake's mother. He was born in September 1960. A second confusing aspect is that Johnny Blake Peterson had a lot of step and half siblings because of all the marriages in his family. Seven siblings that I know of. Peterson was a lifelong Vegas resident and was living there when Kim was killed. He had various addresses throughout the city over the years. At one point he also resided at 1603 Lorna Drive in Henderson. As an adult, he was 6 foot 2 inches tall, 180 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes. He was only 19 when he killed Kim, who was likely his first victim. Peterson was a student at Western High, where Kim attended, but it doesn't appear that he was enrolled there at the time she was killed and there is no indication that they knew each other. I couldn't help but wonder if Kim might have accepted a ride from an older guy she recognized from school, but apparently the police believe that that was not the case and that there was no connection between the two. Peterson was arrested for burglary in Kingman, Arizona in September 1978. After that, all his run ins with the law were in Nevada. Here is an overview of John E. Blake Peterson's arrest record in both Clark county and in Nevada as a whole. February of 1979 arrested for burglary by the LVMPD April 1980 arrested for sexual assault by the LVMPD. July 1980 arrested for speeding by the Nevada Highway Patrol. October 1981 arrested for unspecified warrants by the LVMPD. November 1981 arrested for unspecified warrants by the LvMPD. September 1983 arrested for a probation violation by the Nevada Department of parole and probation. May 1991 arrested for a traffic violation, so you heard. An April 1980 arrest for sexual assault. Peterson was arrested in Las Vegas in April of 80 for sexually assaulting a minor, but the charges were later dropped because this case involved a juvenile. My Open Records act request to review the case file was denied. Note that this 1980 arrest for a sex crime preceded CODIS. If he were arrested for the same crime today, he would likely have had to submit a DNA sample to the database. Most of Peterson's arrest involved petty criminal activity, property crimes and drug offenses. Unfortunately, he got away with the big stuff. In February 1990, a small ad appeared in the classified section of the Review Journal advertising Johnny Peterson's Contractor services. It says, quality homes, remodels, difficult roofs, decks, concrete, finished work. He provided free estimates, it says. Thanks to Mayhem in the Desert, a great Las Vegas crime blog site for posting this. Johnny Blake Peterson died of a heroin overdose on or about January 20, 1993. He was buried in Grants Pass, Oregon, where his mother lived and was buried. He was never on police radar for Kim's murder. On November 29, investigator Terry Miller got in touch with Johnny's daughter via phone. I'm going to call her by her initial J. J told Miller that she had two siblings, a boy and a girl. Her mom, whom I'm calling by her first initial. C married their father, Johnny Blake Peterson, on February 6, 1982. She was still married to him when he died in 1993. After his death, C moved the family to New York, where she was from. C was next on the list for detectives to talk to. She confirmed that she was married to Johnny when he died of an overdose. And she told Detective Miller something very intriguing in late 1983, when she was heavily pregnant with her and Johnny's son. C had found two items that her husband couldn't explain to her satisfaction. One was a pair of women's underwear, not her own, that she found in his truck. The other was a pair of brand new looking headphones that Johnny told her he had found. C told the detective that at the time she was young, pregnant and naive, so she left it alone. But the finding of these two things always bothered her. Now that she knew that her husband had sexually assaulted and murdered a teenage girl, she thought the information was worth sharing. And boy was she right, because the headphones rang a bell in Detective Miller's mind. There was another cold case from the area that she happened to also be reviewing. A case in which there were missing headphones and in which there was also DNA
- [60:49]
Amazon Music Sponsor
for everyone who solves crime from their couch, knows more about forensics than their own job, and has trust issues with small town sheriffs. Amazon Music's millions of podcast episodes are calling. Just download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite true crime podcasts ad free included with Prime
- [61:10]
Narrator
Diana Ray Hansen was born on September 13, 1961 in Las Vegas to parents Patricia and Raymond. Her father was a pilot stationed at Nellis Air Force Base. Her brother Kevin followed in his father's footsteps into the USAF and was stationed in Mississippi. The two siblings were close. Diana had graduated from Clark High School and at age 22 was a senior studying marketing and advertising at North Texas State in Denton, Texas. Kevin, Diana's brother, told the Review Journal his sister was very creative and hoped to get into design as her career. She had also dabbled in modeling. Diana's close girlfriends said Diana was a little naive about men and a little insecure. Although she was 22, she was relatively inexperienced and definitely was considered a good girl. She was outgoing and friendly, but she was not forward with men and she never would have accepted a ride from a stranger. On December 30, 1980, three. Diana was home for Christmas break. She was an avid runner and her brother Kevin had given her a shiny new Walkman Knockoff made by GE called the Stereo Great Escape 2 with headphones to listen to on her runs. Kevin said that as a rule Diana chose to run with a friend rather than alone. It just seemed safer and was more fun. But on this Friday afternoon, Diana headed out alone, setting out from her parents house at 6470 West Desert Inn Road near Torrey Pines Boulevard with her new headphones on. Diana's father Raymond had worked the night shift and when he got home that morning, the 30th around 11:30, he and Diana chatted and then he went to bed. When he got up at 5:30, he noticed Diana was gone. She often jogged in the late afternoon so he didn't start to worry yet. Then his wife Patricia came home at 6:30 and checked Diana's room and she wasn't there. Her jogging clothes were missing. They realized that Diana had been gone for quite some time. They started calling around to handful of friends Diana had who still lived in the area. But none had heard from her. She never came home. After an hour and a half her parents called the police to report her missing. No formal report was made, but patrol cars were dispatched to check the area along the two routes Diana usually ran. They found nothing. The next morning around 8:00am Las Vegas uniform Officer Kay Cook was dispatched to the Hanson residence to take a formal missing persons report. Diana's parents said Diana was 5 foot 9, 130 pounds and was known to wear a simple gray sweatsuit while jogging. She probably had her new headphone portable stereo with her, they said. But before much could be done, per the missing persons report, Diana was found at 9:56am on New Year's Eve. A man named John Winlow, who was looking for firewood down a dirt road came upon the nude body of a woman. She was lying face down near the fence of the Las Vegas Water District Reservoir located on west spring Mountain Road, 1.4 miles west of South Buffalo Drive. Officers Cook and Burgess went to meet Winlow who led them to the body. Detectives met them there by 10:45. This directly from the police report quote. Ms. Hansen was the victim of an apparent murder as she had been stabbed multiple times in the chest, back and side and a blood trail could be followed for approximately 1/10 of a mile west of the location where her body was found. The trail of blood led down the dirt road to an area west of the body that is referred to in the report as, quote, the originating scene. There again, per the police report, quote, a vehicle had turned around in some soft dirt and leaving a set of tire impressions. And next to these tire impressions were the first signs of blood or any type of struggle. The struggle was indicated by impressions of what appear to be hands and knees on the ground around the first spots of blood. Also at this point were some smooth soled shoe and heel prints of a shoe whose size would be between a 9 and a 10 approximately. From this point, a trail of blood and bare footprints can be followed across Spring Mountain Road in a southeasterly direction, continuing east down and across a small wash through the desert and leading along the north side of the chain link fence around the reservoir to where the victim's body was finally found. Diana's body lay at the fence line, twisted at the torso and covered in blood with visible stab wounds. She was wearing only one blood stained white ankle sock with a yellow pom pom on the heel on her right foot and some jewelry, a small gold ring with three stones and an earring in her left pierced ear. The right earring was missing, but there was no sign of tearing, which indicated to investigators that her earring was deliberately removed. Crime scene investigators photographed and took impressions of the tire tracks, which they noted came from two different types of tires. They also collected some items that lay at the struggle spot one tenth of a mile from the body, suspecting that they were related. These were a white button, a matchbook, a pen, two empty packs of Marlboro Lights, a new pen light and a large rock with blood on it. None of these items would turn out to have identifiable fingerprints. Meanwhile, one of the detectives went to the Hansen home and asked Raymond to describe his daughter's ring. He did, and the detective had to tell him that she might be the victim of a murder. Within hours, Diana's parents officially had to identify her at the morgue. Her homecoming from college went from holiday joy and New Year's Eve celebration anticipation to devastation and sorrow. Within a 90 minute interval, her shocked and stunned family could say only that they knew of no one who would have harmed their daughter. Kevin Hansen said later that his parents lives were devastated by the loss of their daughter. He told the review journal, quote, for my mom, anytime she saw a movie or something where a mother is helping her daughter get ready for a wedding or something, she would be upset. We grew up Catholic and she was actually praying for the guy's soul. It took her years. She was angry at God for a while and then she prayed for the Killer's soul. An autopsy was performed on Diana by Dr. G. Sheldon Green. Nevada is one of the few states which does not permit the public to view autopsy reports. So I was not able to read Diana's, which was redacted in its entirety when I received it. However, basically it said that Diana died from blood loss after suffering multiple stab wounds and she was sexually assaulted. Her hands were bagged at the scene and Dr. Green preserved fingernail scrapings in evidence. 24 detectives were put on Diana's case. They surmised that Diana was abducted somewhere along her running route, pulled into a vehicle and driven to the area where she was found. She was there, raped and killed on the ground. I reviewed several hundred pages of the Hansen case file and I will say that the investigators left no stone unturned. They checked her co worker boyfriend Ron's alibi. He had been working at a bar in Dallas that evening. They called area hospitals and got the names of every man who had come in on the afternoon and night of December 30th with an injury. They contacted GE and learned that about 30,000 of the headphone stereos were manufactured during the same week as Diana's, which had a date code on the packaging. They checked all calls to police about suspicious activity on the day Diana was killed and they canvassed all businesses and residents in a multi block radius surrounding Torrey Pines and Spring Mountain Road. In their canvas they located a guy named Leroy P. Who told them that at around 4pm on the afternoon of December 30, he saw a woman jogging southbound on Rainbow Boulevard. She was wearing a gray jogging suit. A female witness, Rhonda Kay, also saw a woman jogging southbound on Torrey Pines around 4pm she was wearing a gray jogging suit too. A third witness, Amelia F. Reported that on December 30th on Spring Mountain Road at 4:30 when the sun was beginning to set, she saw a woman in a gray jogging suit and headphones. Another witness named Charlotte reported seeing a young woman with dark hair in a light blue sweatsuit and headphones jogging on Torrey Pines at 5:34pm a Sue S. Reported seeing a young woman in a gray jogging suit and headphones running on Spring Mountain Road. She was being followed by a small yellow car driving slowly behind her. Finally, a city employee told them that he saw a white female jogging at 3pm on Rainbow Boulevard. She was wearing a gray sweatsuit with a Walkman type stereo on her left hip and headphones. Of course, these sightings could not all have been Diana unless she was jogging for Close to three hours. But some of the reports seem pretty accurate, and they helped police determine that the young woman was abducted sometime in the afternoon, most likely between 2:30 and 6. It's also bizarre how many people believed that they had seen Diana jogging or at least noticed a young woman jogging in a gray sweatsuit with headphones. But no one saw anything involving a violent abduction. One really poignant sighting of Diana that was in the case file was by an active duty Metro intelligence detective who lived in the area, Detective Jean Marshall. He noted that on Friday the 30th in the late afternoon, he was driving south on Tenaya, approaching Spring Mountain, when he saw a woman in an unadorned gray sweatsuit jogging west on Spring Mountain. This was between 4 and 4:30pm the woman was white, on the tall side, in her early 20s, wearing a headset. The detective later recognized Diana from the photo that he was shown. And here's the sad part. The file shows that he noted her because he thought to himself, why was a girl like that jogging in such an isolated area? She is only asking for trouble being in that location all by herself. Of course, this is a somewhat dated mentality, right? Women should not have to curtail their activities or alter their routes based on the remote possibility of some lurking predator. But unfortunately, Detective Marshall was right to be concerned for her welfare. One of the first things that was done was a roadblock. On New Year's Day. Metro police set up roadblocks on Torrey Pines at Spring Mountain Road and showed drivers Diana's photo to try to find drivers who might have been out on the day of the murder and seen something. Detectives made the rounds of local pawn shops, showing the dealers a photo of GE portable stereos and asking if anyone had pawned one like it and requesting that they call if someone did bring one in. They also pulled out all the stops to match the tire tracks found at the scene. Investigators came to believe they were from an older model vehicle, Most likely a 1971-74 domestic van or possibly a pickup that had mismatched tires on the front and rear axles. Some of the tires were peerless traction tires. They literally drove around the city looking for a vehicle with tires that matched the impressions from the scene. They seized and searched a lot of 70s era Dodge, Ford and Chevy trucks. Anyone who was the subject of a traffic stop or ticket or anyone noticed in the area who had tires that could fit those found at the scene was written up and his name provided to Metro Homicide. Then, as search and rescue personnel were walking the route it was believed Diana jogged. They found something on the west side of Torrey Pines, about a half mile north of Spring Mountain Road. They found some tire tracks in the dirt on the side of the road. The officer who had photographed the distinctive tire tracks at the scene observed these other tire tracks and stated these were the same tire tracks which were found at the scene of the crime. He meant the scene where Diana's body was found. Due to other marks found near these tire tracks, which the file does not describe, but I would imagine were shoe and scuffle marks, investigators believed they now knew exactly where Diana had been abducted. She was taken by this vehicle to the spot where the other tire marks were found and the blood trail and footprints leading to the spot where Diana was found. All this work did result in a few promising leads. A resident of Diana's neighborhood told investigating officers that his wife was a jogger and she had had problems with a man in a white pickup truck following her, A female jogger. The police spoke with Mary W. Told them that about three weeks before the murder, she was jogging on Torrey Pines when a man pulled off the roadway in his 1970-74 pickup truck, exited the vehicle, opened up the white camper in the back, and stood by the truck, waiting for her to approach as she ran. He was of medium build with slightly longer brown hair. Mary wisely decided to change course, and when he saw that she had turned off, the man closed the back, got into his truck, and drove away. Another witness of Fritz H. Told investigators that he was driving on Spring Mountain Road on the night of the 30th between 5 and 6pm when he saw two people struggling next to a white older model Cadillac pulled onto the side of the road. He could not tell if the people were male or female, but one figure was attempting to force the other figure into the car. It then sped off at a very high rate of speed. Fritz led detectives to where he had seen the car, and they noted that the tire tracks were similar to the ones found near Diana's body. And then, on the 15th of January, nearly 60 men from the Search and Rescue Division of the LVMPD met to perform a grid search of the area. They were looking for anything relating to the crime, but particularly Diana's clothing and stereo, which had not been found despite the neighborhood canvas searches of all the dumpsters and trash cans in the area, and even aerial searches. On the north side of Spring Mountain Road, about 15ft off the roadway, hidden by some brush, one of the men found a gray Sweatshirt and a white sock with a yellow pom pom. It appeared to be an exact match to the one Diana was found wearing. Further inspection of the area located two New Balance running shoes, gray sweatpants with women's beige underwear tangled in them, and a white long sleeve T shirt. A blood stain on the inside of the gray sweatshirt clearly showed the outlines of a red knife blade pattern in blood. Okay, and this is gross, so I'm just going to read from the police report. Quote, the lab technician also pointed out that the stain which had been noted on the white long sleeve undershirt, appeared to contain possible blood semen and feces stains, suggesting that the suspect wiped their penis or other body area at one point during the sexual assault on Diana Hansen. One person who was investigated at length by police was a crap stealer at Circus Circus who knew Diana. In fact, a female friend of Diana's told police that Diana had gone on a date with this guy in 1982 and later confided to two friends that he had forced himself upon her in his Dodge van. Police interviewed this guy and he said he was not at work on the night Diana was killed because he was home sick. He said he didn't recall having sex with Diana. He willingly agreed to give hair samples, and he allowed police to search his van. Another guy they talked to was Diana's ex, John, and a guy at her college who she was very casually seeing when she was killed. Generally, they learned that Diana did not have a lot of friends left in the Las Vegas area. And she really considered Texas and her college home. A detective actually flew to Texas and spent some time on the ground there digging into Diana's life, but found nothing whatsoever that seemed to help the investigation. One potential suspect there was ruled out, but I have no details on who this was. There were many, many more suspects looked at that I am not going to get into. But inevitably, the case went cold. The Review Journal reports that in 1983, when Diana was killed, police theorized for a while that the Diana Henson and Kim Bryant cases could be related to. But they seem to move away from that theory. Kim Bryan. Investigators at the time were fully focused on Stephen Morin, who was alive and sitting on death row in Texas. They knew Morin could not have attacked Diana because of the timing, but they still firmly believed that he had killed Kim. Okay, so recall that on September 28, 2021, Othram reported Johnny Blake Peterson's name to the LVMPD. That was for the Kim Bryant case. Well, a month or so earlier, on August 17, Detective Terry Miller met with evidence vault technician Amy Davis to review the physical evidence in the Diana Hansen case. They wanted to see if there was anything they could test for her case. The vaginal and other swabs taken at autopsy were missing. But still in the evidence packages were blood samples, pubic hairs and pubic hair combings. The combings contained male DNA sufficient to create an STR profile of the killer. After learning from Johnny Peterson's wife about the headphones, Detective Miller immediately requested that the crime lab run a comparison of the suspect DNA from Diana's case with the suspect DNA profile from Kim's case, now known to belong to Peterson. And lo and behold, it was a match. Diana's missing headphones were almost certainly the ones C. Peterson's wife found in Johnny's possession in winter of 1983, right after he killed Diana. Johnny Blake Peterson had killed both Kim and Diana. Neither girl's family had ever heard of him. His targeting of Kim and Diana is believed to have been completely random. Detective John Silbaugh, who worked the Bryant case for years, said, when you have a woman or a girl, kidnapped, murdered, put in a desert, that is an MO from the first one he does to the last one he does, it never changes. LVMPD Homicide Lieutenant Ray Spencer headlined a press conference on November 30, 2021. He said, quote, Ten days ago we were notified that the genealogical profile built by Othram Labs based on sperm recovered from the body of Kim Bryant at autopsy revealed that Johnny Blake Peterson was the person who kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered Kim Bryant. Kim's mom had passed away years earlier. But Lieutenant Spencer read a statement from Kim's father, Ed Elliott, thanking the LVMPD Detective Terry Miller, Othram Labs and Las Vegas philanthropist Justin Wu. Wu has donated funds to pay for the DNA testing to solve some local cold cases, including Kim's and Diana's. Ed's statement said Kim was a beautiful girl with a bright future and it makes me happy that something is being done to solve cases such as hers. Dr. Kristen Mittleman, Othram's chief business development officer, explained that cold cases can be solved with just microscopic amounts of DNA. She said, Our average cost per case is about $5,000. All they need is funding. Othram has launched its DNA solves crowdsourced funding program, which gathers donations to pay for testing in cold cases and DNA profiles for entry into its database to assist in investigations and DOE identifications. You can participate@dnasolves.com Diana did not get a press conference because her killer was the same guy who had already been fingered a week before. In Kim's case, the LVMPD did a short video announcing the closure of her case and attributing her murder to Peterson. So what else did Peterson do? Are there any more murders he's responsible for? His wife, C, told Detective Miller that she and Johnny had resided in Oklahoma for a time and police should check his criminal history there. As a result, a VICAP alert was issued about Peterson and his crimes, with a recommendation that law enforcement agencies review their open and unsolved homicides from the 80s, especially in the states of Montana, Oklahoma, Arizona, Oregon and Nevada. All of these were states Peterson was known to live in or travel to. His profile has been entered into codis and there are a few cases where he is being considered a person of interest. Lt. Spencer said that Las Vegas investigators are now looking into five other unsolved murders between the mid-70s and mid-80s. The five other cases are sexual assault homicides of young women in the Las Vegas area in the time frame when Peterson was active. Lieutenant Spencer said, quote, the five cold cases. There's nothing that's specifically linking him to those cases. But those five cases are all white women who were sexually assaulted and killed between the late 70s and early 80s. So we just want to see if he is potentially a suspect in any of those cases. We are taking a very deep dive to see if he potentially could be the suspect. We are either going to eliminate him or determine if he is a suspect. After 42 and 38 years, Kim Bryant's and Diana Hanson's cases are closed thanks to Forensic Genealogy. And if you're one of the bad guys, they're coming for you. Thanks for listening to this episode of dnaid. Before you leave, please let me tell you about some important things related to the show. If you'd like to support this podcast and in the process get access to early and ad free episodes as well as bonus content like crime scene photos, you can sign up for a Patreon subscription for only $5 a month by heading over to patreon.com of course, you're welcome to contribute more than $5 a month. We rely on Patreon funds to pay for the original source materials I use to research each episode. If Patreon isn't your thing, you can also show your support with an ABJAC Insider subscription through Apple Podcasts. It costs just $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. Your Abjak Insider subscription will give you the same benefits for not only dnaid but for all of the shows on the ABJAC Network like Killer Communications and Campus Killings. Head over to Apple Podcasts and find the DNAID page or look for the ABJAC Network to get started. If you're on social media, we'd love to interact with you there. DNAID is on every major social media platform. Search your favorite platforms for DNAID Podcasts to find us. We also have a YouTube channel and our website is DNAID podcast.com. you can find links to all of these anytime in our show Notes. If you need to reach the show, contact us by emailing dnaid podcastmail.com finally, if you want to pick up some fun DNAID merch and represent the show, visit the store at www.customizedgirl.coms/dnaid podcast. DNAID is researched, written and hosted by me, Jessica Bettencourt. It's produced by me and Mike Morford of abjack Entertainment Music by Connor Bettencourt.