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Excludes Massachusetts Content Warning this episode includes discussion of rape, murder and suicide.
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When Genevieve Zatricky went to bed in the early morning hours of April 5, 1990, she had a lot to look forward to in the coming days and weeks and years. Perhaps she thought of that as she drifted to sleep. But that was before the stranger forced his way inside her room. Zatricky, who went by Jenny, was only 28. Pictures show a woman with big dark hair, dark eyes, a penchant for big earrings and an even bigger smile. She was born on August 11, 1961, and raised in Youngstown, Ohio. There she graduated from Youngstown State University. She was close with her family, parents Edward and Rosemary and her brother Philip. She had many happy memories of summering with them along the lake. Jenny loved her family. She loved fishing, and she loved her team, the Cleveland Browns.
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She and her then husband moved to Greenville, South Carolina in June of 1988. The marriage hadn't lasted, but Jennie's love for her new city did. She loved her adoptive town, the seat of Greenville county, now one of the state's larger cities. Greenville is situated in the western corner of the state. The county borders North Carolina. It has attracted some big companies. Those included Michelin, the French multinational tire manufacturer. Jenny's employer, Citricky, worked at the plant on Antioch Church Road as a systems programmer analyst. She also played for the company's softball team. Jenny loved people and loved doing things. She belonged to the Buncombe Street United Methodist Church and the Brown Backers Club of Greenville.
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Jenny had a place of her own, Hidden Lake Apartments, number 227. She had lived there for about three years. Located at 15 Villa Road, off North Pleasantburg, the complex was on Greenville's east side. The apartments attracted professionals. Young, unattached, childless, ready to work hard during the week and party hard on the weekends. They would gather together for pool parties at the complex. The rear sliding doors of Jenny's apartment looked out over the pool patio. Sometimes during parties, she would let pool party guests use her restroom. She was nice like that. Jenny was outgoing. She loved hanging out with her friends at local bars. Churchill's, Matrix, Encore, Shooters. She liked to party. Her friends and family described her as a big personality, someone who loved to laugh, a bit of a firecracker, a force of nature. Jenny was someone everybody liked and got along with. That made her a trusting person who liked to socialize and make new friends.
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On Wednesday, April 4, 1990, Jenny met with some of those friends. She was ready for a big event on Saturday. You see, Jenny was supposed to be in a wedding party. She had her dress already dry cleaned, left draped on a chair in her living room. She and some friends who were also in the wedding party met up at a nearby apartment for drinks. She departed at midnight and walked home. There, she called another friend and chatted for half an hour.
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The prospect of going to a wedding must have been exciting for someone as social as Jenny. A wedding meant dancing, hanging out with those she held dear, meeting new people. And 1990 had brought along some troubles and heartbreak for her, too. Sadly, her father had fallen ill with cancer. The family went on one last trip to Las Vegas together. In February of 1990, before he died. But Jenny assured her mother, Rosemary, that she would not have to spend her first Christmas as a widow alone. Jenny told Rosemary, a psychiatric nurse for the state of Ohio, that she would take her back to Vegas. Jenny was not able to keep that promise, though. Not because of anything she did wrong, but because of the viciousness of a stranger. She never went back to Vegas. She never had the chance to do many things. Find the right guy. Marry again, maybe have some kids if she wanted to. Play another softball game, Meet her friends for drinks again. Soak up another pool party, Go to that wedding. Talk to her mother or brother one last time. That's because a pathetic killer wandered into her apartment that night around 2am he hovered in the darkness, staring at Jenny while she slept. Then, clutching some kind of tire tool or screwdriver or metal bar, nobody really knows, he began to beat her. Blood spattered across her bedding and the wall. He struck her again. And again and again and again. The only mercy was that she may have never woken up. That she might never have known what was happening to her. Because this killer then started to strangle her. Tying pantyhose and knotting it around her neck. With that ligature gripped in his hand, he dragged her body face down into the bathroom. He filled the tub. At some point, he sexually assaulted Jenny. Then he left her body in the filled bathtub. The killer then grabbed Jenny's purse. He emptied its contents into a sink filled with water. He took a permanent marker and wrote a message. Don't fuck with my family. He left with the murder weapon. He did not steal anything aside from Jenny's life. The killer was Robert Eugene Brashers. He was a sexual deviant who liked hurting women and girls. This is the only reason that Jenny did not get to enjoy the rest of her life. That she died in such a brutal, horrible fashion. This was a case that the Greenville Police Department started investigating right away. The moment that maintenance men with the Hidden Lake Apartments called the sin. The detectives kept working it for years. Even when it was being dubbed as a cold case, they were still on it. And then finally, in 2018, they got some answers. The work done by South Carolina authorities, along with police in other states like Missouri and Tennessee, recently helped connect rashers to the 1991 yogurt shop murders of Austin, Texas. That is right. 610 days after murdering Jenny and slightly over a thousand miles away, Rashers murdered 13 year old Amy Ayers. 15 year old Sarah Harbison. 16, 17 year old Jennifer Harbison and 17 year old Eliza Thomas at the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt shop in Austin, Texas. Today we're going to talk to one of the detectives who worked this case for years. Lieutenant Tim Conroy of the Greenville Police Department will take us through the case of Jenny Zatricky and how he and his colleagues finally managed to crack it by never giving up. My name is Anya Cain, I'm a journalist.
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And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm a, an attorney.
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And this is the Murder Sheet.
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We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet.
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And this is the murder of Genevieve Zatrycki, the Yogurt Shop murders and serial killer Robert Eugene Brashers first person, Lieutenant Tim Conroy of the Greenville Police Department. SA.
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Can you tell us what originally drew you to a career in law enforcement?
C
Wow, that's a deep question. I guess I would have to say my family, my father, my grandfather are both in the FBI. So my brother's an agent now. So I just, I've always been an outside person. So I didn't want to be in an office. So I just figured what better to do than be a police officer, be outside all the time and interact with people.
B
So can you tell us a little bit about your professional career in law enforcement?
C
So I started in 96. I started as a road officer. I guess about five years into my career I got promoted or moved to the detective division. I worked in vice narcotics for about five years and then after that I transferred to the investigations division. Did about six months in auto break in auto theft or property crimes and then I transferred to violent crimes and I did about 12 years in violent crimes and then after that I was promoted, I went back to the road. Promoted to a sergeant, I went back to the road, worked on the road for about a year and then transferred over to the vice and narcotics division again as a sergeant for four to five years. Went back to investigations over the violent crimes division and I was there for probably about three months as a sergeant and promoted to a lieutenant and kind of started to cycle over. I went back to the uniform patrol, was on the road for about a year and then I transferred straight up to investigations. I was a lieutenant over the investigations division for a little over two years, maybe closer to three years. And then I transferred over to, transferred from investigations to the downtown or central business district and I've been supervising that as a lieutenant for about two years now.
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What can you tell us about Greenville, South Carolina, and then also what it's like to police and investigate crimes in that city.
C
So Greenville is a very quiet place. I mean, it has its number of crimes. A lot of the crimes are known individuals to each other. So we have very few random acts of violence. I mean, auto breakings are probably one of our highest reported crimes. So that's not bad to have a city of 70,000 when auto breakings are your biggest concern. So violent crimes are more known victim to suspect. So very, very few unknown individuals to the victim.
A
I want to ask you a bit about this crime that we're speaking about here today. And then I want to go back and sort of how you got involved, I guess. What can you tell me about Genevieve or Jenny Zatriki that you've sort of learned about her as a person over the years, you know, aside from this horrible thing that happened to her, but just give us a sense of her and her personality, I guess so.
C
Jenny was definitely an extrovert. She came from Ohio, transferred down here. She was married for several years, divorced, and she little lived by herself over at Hidden Lake Apartments. At the time, she was in multiple clubs. She was in payroll at Michelin International here in Greenville and had a lot of co workers. She was in the Ohio Football Club here, played softball. Very, very outgoing. She never shy to talk to anybody, so. And that was. That was one of the most difficult parts, reading over the case file. She had pictures and pictures of everybody. So trying to identify them, trying to talk to them, see if anybody could give a little clue. She kept a diary. So she had like daily entries into her diary and there's just a lot of stuff to. To sort through. But she was very, very outgoing. Never met an enemy until the night of her death.
A
Absolutely. And you mentioned Hidden Lake Apartments. And just from reading some of the original press coverage, it's my understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is kind of a happening apartment complex. Young professionals, childless mostly. They're hanging out, they're partying a bit on the weekends. Is that fair to say?
C
That is very fair to say. It was all young professionals over there. Jenny lived at her apartment, opened up right out to the pool deck. So it was not uncommon for people to just walk in and out of her apartment.
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Right now My listeners can save 50% on a SimpliSafe home security system at simplisafe.com msheet that's simplisafe.com msheet there's no safe like Simplisafe. Hey everybody, it's Reese Witherspoon here. I've written a new novel with number one best selling author Harlan Coben. It's called Gone Before Goodbye. It's got everything Harlan and I love in stories. High stakes suspense, everyday people in crazy situations and so many twists and turns. Gone Before Goodbye is a non stop thrill ride and you cannot put it down. And the great news is it's available now wherever books and audiobooks are sold. What happened to her in the early morning hours of April 5, 1990?
C
She talked to her friend on the phone that evening, had their little conversation and she went to bed. That night at some time her back sliding glass door was pried opened. Blunt force trauma was the cause of murder or the manner of murder. So it appears somebody broke into her apartment and went directly to her bedroom.
A
So it's possible she never even woke up.
C
It's very possible that she never woke up. Just looking at the evidence at the scene, the the blood spatter on the walls, the the blood on the bed and the where her body would have been laying. It was very very possible she never woke up during the incident.
A
Do we know what the murder weapon was?
C
No, we don't. It was could have been a tire iron, could have been a metal bar, just some type of Hard object.
A
And I do want to ask one thing, and we don't want to get into too many of the details of this crime scene because it's. It's pretty brutal, and we want to be respectful to the victim. But there was also an element of. Of strangulation. Is that correct?
C
That is correct. That was not the cause of the death. I don't know if that was. Again, I don't know if that was just to move the body around, because it had. If there was a ligature. I don't want to speculate what it was, but I. I feel that the. There was her own pantyhose that were used to tie around her, and it had handles on those. I believe it was to move her from one room to another.
A
Right. Because she's moved from her bedroom to the bathroom where she's put in the tub that is then filled up with water.
C
That is correct.
A
And she's fully clothed?
C
No, she's not fully clothed. She had a T shirt on.
A
Okay. So she's left in the bathtub. And now my understanding is the killer left some kind of. At least one kind of pretty bizarre, or I guess two bizarre clues. Is one being what he did to her purse. Can you talk about that?
C
Yeah. So there's a lot of stuff at the crime scene. No, we know now, looking back, it was kind of like. Are these red herrings? There was a note on the mirror that said, don't f with my family. It was written with a marker that was in her. In her room, so matched markers that were in her dresser. He obviously didn't bring that, so we don't believe he had that with him when he entered the apartment. So it was kind of a. Just a red herring that the note was on the mirror. All the drawers on her dresser were opened. A jewelry box was open with jewelry in the. In the jewelry box to make it potentially look like a robbery. But it wasn't a robbery. Her purse was. Everything in her purse was taken out, dumped in the kitchen sink, and the water was left running for, you know, since the. After midnight on the 5th until the 6th or the morning when she was located.
A
So that's truly so bizarre.
C
So I think that was. You know, there's also a book on the ground that had a latent print on it that we were never able to identify. Again, I don't know if that was just maybe the victim's, Jenny's toe print, something else, but we were never able to match that print. I was probably too big for a finger that didn't match that print. I think that was just. It was on a book that was positioned right beside the bed. How to be a complete. So I think that was kind of just a look what I did. And just throwing evidence out there just to try to throw the police off. But it was looking at the documents of the crime scene, the pictures in the crime scene. It was. There was a lot of stuff around it. It was just sitting by itself with a perfect latent print on it so that we were unable to match to anybody. So I think he spent a lot of time in there staging the scene and destroying any evidence that he may have touched. Obviously putting her body in the tub and letting the water run for two days, trying to destroy every evidence that could come back to him and just throw the investigators off.
A
I read in some of the press things that there was outside a glove found and a picture of a woman, but then that was later trace to one of the women in the apartment complex. Is that correct?
C
So there was a rubber glove found up the street from her. We don't know if it was linked, but it was. It was a. The picture was of a female from the apartment complex a quarter mile away. So it wasn't even her apartment complex. It was the next one up the street. So I don't know if that was linked or if that was, you know, a maintenance man that went in there and found her picture or something. I don't know. She never talking to who was in that picture. She never knew that it was missing or how it could have gotten to where it did.
A
Right, right. There can be weird, like red herrings like that, I imagine, at any crime scene.
C
Correct.
A
So reading about this initial response, it sounds like Greenville police and county police were immediately had had quite an extensive response. I read that there were, I think, two forensic teams at the scene processing evidence, looking at everything, and dozens of detectives going around and trying to talk to as many people as possible. Can you speak a bit about that?
C
Right. So, I mean, obviously any. Any major crime scene like this, you're going to canvas the area as much as you can. Somebody may say, oh, I saw this person here or this. So there may be small details that you gain from multiple people. So there were, you know, numerous investigators on the scene canvas in the area, talking to everybody, looking for things that found the glove in the picture. Don't know if it was related, but it was something that obviously raised suspicion of why it was there. So any crime scene like that, you are going to have numerous people out There just trying to talk to everybody. There was Greenville county forensics that came out and then the state law enforcement division sent their own. Another forensics team out there and they kind of, I wouldn't say they got along. So there was some, some banter back and forth who can do what so. But there was a major with the state law enforcement division that called the, his team up to kind of help maybe with some new techniques that they. Of collecting evidence. So.
A
Yeah, yeah, I imagine there could be sometimes that friction.
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Right?
C
For sure there was.
A
And you know, my understanding is that they were able to, they were not able to get any fingerprints that even some services had been wiped down in the bathroom at least.
C
Yes. So it appeared there was a fingerprint on the book or a latent, you know, some type of print on the book and then there was one on the shower curtain that we have been able to. Unable to match to anybody even now going back to knowing who the suspect was, it wasn't his print. So it was very, very clean. It was. I mean we didn't even find Jenny's prints in the, in her own apartment. So it was. He's definitely spent some time in there cleaning the areas that he, he was exposed to.
A
And, and as we mentioned in terms of the lack of, in terms of the mysterious prints, we don't know. You mentioned a possible toe print, but there's also, she's a single woman. People are in and out of the apartment. Not necessarily super unusual for maybe someone who's just. Someone's just in there visiting her and maybe leaves a print.
C
Right. And you would think since it is, you know, lived in there would be some type of print in there that one of the two forensics teams would have collected and they did not collect any.
A
Yeah, that, that makes sense. So I do understand though, and obviously one of the big reasons we're talking today is that there, there was DNA collected. Can you tell us about the offender DNA that was collected from this crime.
C
During any homicide investigation, the victim is going to have an autopsy done and the pathologist is going to collect swabs from under the fingernail, cut the fingernails off. Hopefully there's some DNA under those different areas of the body. There's going to be examine and there was a cervical swab that had a, an unknown sample there. Obviously we didn't know what that swab provided until many years later because they were doing blood type or typing originally excluding people. So it wasn't until, I mean this was in 1990, so it wasn't until 2005, when we resubmitted all the evidence and were able to come up with a DNA profile, my understanding.
A
So they looked at her ex husband. They looked at, you know, people who were in a wedding party that she was going to be in that weekend. So were there any initial good suspects or were people being ruled out pretty quickly?
C
People were being ruled out pretty quickly. I mean, there, there were some people that raised suspicion, you know, the ex husband, obviously, but very, very cooperative talked. It was. So they ruled people out pretty quickly. There wasn't anybody that just stuck out as, you know, there were people interviewed once or twice or twice or three times, but they were cleared eventually.
A
So one interview I found it was of one of the investigators from, from early on, Stephen Biss was talking about how people who study crimes or profilers kind of love a case like this because there's, it's just so baffling. There's weird signatures at the scene and that, you know, Greenville police were even looking at some serial killers. Like, I think it was like Henry Lewis Wallace and one, one from Kentucky, where they were, you know, looking at that possibility of this being a serial killer. Can, can you tell us a little bit about some of those leads that came up over time?
C
So there were three profilers, FBI profilers that looked at this case, and they all came up with a different profile. So they did look at numerous people involved in other crimes, but there was never enough whether it was location or something else that excluded them from being a suspect. So. But they looked at a lot of different things, talked to a bunch of agencies for other similarities, and never were able to connect the dots to anybody.
B
You often hear about, like the FBI drawing up profiles in a case like this. Was there a profile prepared in this case?
C
So there were three profiles the FBI conducted in this case, I believe one was a female and the other two were. One. One was a. A smaller build of a white male. So they pretty much got that. But the other things didn't match. So it was. Yeah, and talking to the profilers like, oh, once it's solved, I'd love to. I'd love to see it. So. Well, you know, I think a lot of people could profile it after they know who the suspect is, but so, so there, there was never a clear person or stereotype to go after from any of their profiles.
A
Wait, so they, they thought a woman did this at some point?
C
One of them. One of them. But that was before the. We were able to determine sexual assault and everything. So before we got the cervical Swab. We didn't know if that was somebody Jenny was with or. And they didn't even know that it was what was on that because the technology of DNA hasn't come along yet. So they didn't, they didn't really examine that evidence closely until we, we were able to get the profile, DNA profile.
A
But, but this profile was not spot on as far as like, you know, matching who it ended up.
C
No, no.
B
Just hearing about all of the work and such that was done. Is there ever an element of luck in ultimately solving a case like this?
C
Yes, I would say, I'm sure many police would disagree with me, but I would say that every police officer has luck on their side. Obviously, technology helped out dramatically in this. I mean, it was, that's ultimately what solved it. Matching up with Missouri's case. Those two cases are totally different. You know, we had a business woman, we had a child and a mother earlier. You know, a house versus apartment, blunt force trauma were verse, you know, a gunshot victim. So there were very. When, when we got the DNA match between the two, we were kind of like, are you sure this is it? You know, are these connected? So. But yes, there is a lot of luck in police work.
B
We're certainly interested in hearing about the moment when you got that match. But before we do, we've been talking about what was done before you came on this case. How did you come to be involved with this case?
C
So I came to be involved in this case in probably 2007, in 2005, like I said. Retired Major Jim Christopher from SLED said, hey, let's resubmit all the evidence down here to our, our state law enforcement division. Let's let them analyze everything with all the new technology from 1990. So they, they were able to take that cervical swab and come up with a full DNA profile. And that's, that's, you know, I don't know exactly when CODIS came online, but with the DNA, but that's, there weren't many, many, many suspects or known samples in codis. So they were able to come up with a DNA profile. They uploaded that as an unknown and then in 2006 it hit the Missouri case or matched on the Missouri case. So I, I got involved in about 2007, met with Missouri numerous times, went out there, they came to Greenville and we started looking at similarities as well as we did a LexisNexis or accurate search of who lived in 50 miles of Greenville during our crime scene and who lived in 50 miles of their crime scene during the time they came back with five individuals, we eliminated them very, very quickly through buccal swabs.
A
So this Missouri case is the murders of Sherry and Megan Sharer who were murdered at their farmhouse, I believe in.
C
That's correct.
A
Okay. And I mean when you look at those scenes that you kind of alluded to this, they're so different. There's in that case the sexual assault of a child and these, this murder in a, in a home in a rural area. And then you have Jenny who is, is murdered in her apartment in a, in a more, you know, populated area. And, and she's an adult, a 28 year old woman. Were you surprised by how different these crimes looked or were there other similarities that we're not picking up on that you thought did match?
C
No, we did not. We, we joked about it. We were like, okay, are we sure the DNA labs have this profile? Right? I mean obviously they have it, right. But we were like, what is the connection here? What is, you know, you're coming from a, a bigger city and then you're going to the, to the farmhouse. It's, there's nothing similar in these two. And then, you know, right after the sheer murders you're driving down a dirt road and come across this other lady's house in Tennessee two hours after, about 30 miles away from the sheer homicide. So it's, there's nothing similar between the shear and the tricky case that we could, we could find other than the DNA gave us more case files to refer the notes to and see if there's any similarities in, in the notes or the original investigators notes, the crime log, just anything we were looking for. The only similarity that we joked about is there was a trampoline in the sheer, the tricky apartment. One of the small exercise trampolines in the sheer backyard and then yard was a trampoline. You're like, what else is there? We've got to be missing something else. So we compiled names or all the names because you hear oh, maybe the suspect's name somewhere hidden in the case file. So we went through, we identified. We, you know, we had hundreds and hundreds of people. Pictures that were on Jenny's table and film that was undeveloped that we developed or they developed back in the 90s, wrote names on there. We, we would start calling these people, we would go talk to them, see if we could get a, a buckle swab from, you know, and, and now that we had Missouri people moved and they were going to do that for us and they would send some of their names and we were kind of working together to, to eliminate names and the, the case file. So it just. We were, we were grasping for straws and you know the old saying, trying to put a. A square peg in a circle hole. And you just. We wanted to solve it and give closure to the family, give them some answers. But we were just coming up dead end time after time.
B
What does it feel like? Because the amount of work you're describing is really enormous. Did. Was it discouraging at times when you felt like you may not be making progress? No.
C
So I wouldn't say it was discouraging because we've all been in investigations, you know, talking back and forth to each other and, and you get a little break here and there. I mean, we went on and it wasn't a break we were looking for, but, you know, we were on America's Most Wanted and, and they would. Thousands of leads came in and some of them were like, you know, I saw this guy because we had a composite from Missouri. I saw this guy at a supermarket here. So there's not much you can do about that. You know, five years ago they saw him.
B
So.
C
But there were some in there that gave names, date of birth, and, and we would go out to him and get a buckle swab to eliminate them. And he would, you know, be like, yes, that looks exactly like me, but, you know, I'm going to consent to my buckle. So we're like, you know, we're looking at DMV photos and this composite we had and it is just you, this is our guy. And you, you, you go out there and you knock on the door, you kind of try catch them by surprise. You know, you don't call and say, hey, I'm gonna come out and get your buckle swab. You go out there to their house or place of business and you see if they'll consent to a buckle swab. And, and when they consent so easily, it's like, well, that's not going to be our guy. So it's. But you don't get discouraged. You. You just keep on working and working and it's just like any other investigator working any case. You. You want to be able to tell the family this is what we've learned. So I would say it's kind of takes the air out of the cell when. After so long.
A
But yeah, I bet. I mean, so this, this composite sketch you mentioned, that mostly, I imagine, comes from the Tennessee survivor who attacked by this killer, but was. Was able to prevent him from accessing her home in Tennessee.
C
That Is correct, yes. They had some interaction outside their home. I believe he was asking for directions. So they had some interaction out there that had a good look at them. And they were able to give a composite as he, as he was forcing his way into the home, he pushed on the door and put a gun through the door and shield something to her daughter. And they were arguing over or fighting over the gun and it went off and it went through her upper arm. And they were able to match those ballistics to the sheer murders. Wow.
A
And as you mentioned, these are just two hours apart. This is an event on the same day as the Shearer murders. One thing I did want to ask you was in terms of, I guess the composite sketch, was it a contentious or sort of nerve wracking decision to release this sketch? Because as we all know, sketches can be imperfect. They're an artistic rendering of a witness's possibly fleeting memory in a kind of crazy situation. So behind the scenes, was there any sort of debate about whether you should do it or not? Or at that point, were people in agreement, now's the time to release the sketch?
C
So no, Missouri released a sketch years and years ago. So it was out there. But we're always, you know, we've all talked to victims. I gave a description of somebody, and then we go catch the person, arrest them, get a confession, have all this other evidence so we know it's them. And we're looking at their booking photo compared to the compositor or description they gave, and it is not closed at all. So sketches are not reliable. It's a good tool, but you can't rely on that for a positive identifier identification.
B
What was it like working with these agencies from Missouri and Tennessee?
C
I think we were very fortunate. Like, we didn't work much with Tennessee when she got shot through the door. We didn't work much with them. Missouri kind of handled that case and kind of ran with all the leads from the sheer homicides. The investigators were great to work with, always there for you if you needed anything. They drop what they're doing and help out. You know, we like I say, I probably went out there, I think five times, and they came to our to Greenville, probably just as many, if not more. So we would sit down every couple years, we'd kind of get together and say, okay, let's not, you know, we've knocked those 50 or 100 leads out. Let's go move on to the next best leads. So they were great to work with.
A
What were some kind of memories from that Time period that stand out to you in terms of the work you all were doing trying to chase down these leads?
C
I think the biggest thing is going out to their crime scenes and seeing how different it is from ours. You know, they had i55 right there, pretty close to the house, but you couldn't get to it directly. You had to drive down these little roads or fields, and it was. And through ours, it was right off an interstate, you know, two minutes and you're out of there. So it's. And then the. The one in the Waltons in Tennessee, it's. You drove down these big irrigation ditches, and it was so different from our. From Greenville. So it was. How were these linked and what is the connection to the two, besides the DNA? It's like, what. What kind of person, I mean, would live in or know, be familiar with both of these locations?
A
Right, right. And, yeah, I mean, one thing that struck me when I was reading about these was just even though the cases look quite different in the. In a way, like you and the Missouri investigators took. I mean, Greenville and the Missouri investigators took a similar. These. These were kind of heinous crimes. Somebody kept working them the whole time. They weren't like, let to go cold, like. Like they were still active, like, for years. You're going on America's Most Wanted, right?
C
We didn't go on the Americans Most Wanted until after they were connected. And then we joined with Missouri and went on America's Most Wanted, trying to generate some leads, anything we could, but it was ours was never, never stopped working it. You're always. It's always in the back of your mind, you know, the written that went through probably a dozen investigators before it got to my hands. And then fortunately, I had the DNA evidence when I started working the case. So it was definitively, especially after it matches the Missouri's case, because we knew at first when we had the DNA, it was about a year. We're like, okay, well, whose is this? Is this the killer's DNA? And we didn't know 100% it was until it matched Missouri's. And we felt very confident, okay, we've got the. The unknown individual's DNA. Now we just have to work towards getting that identified.
B
Was it frustrating knowing you, you both, you were all looking for the same guy but couldn't find him?
C
Very frustrating. And so in 2016, I was watching a TV show, and it was like identifying these children that were left on the doorstep. And there was. It was CC Moore, did this genetic stuff, was able to identify the, the parents that dropped these off, same three offspring, the children were all the same relatives. So I reached out there in 2016, I was like, hey, I've got this DNA. Can we do anything with it? And unfortunately she goes and you know, and I really didn't expect to pick up the phone and get her on the phone briefly, but we, we just didn't have the DNA to go to that next step with technology to go to the genetics. So. And you know, in 2018 we were fortunate enough to get another case matched up and we were able to have that DNA, the DNA amounts that we needed to go that step. And, and Memphis was, you know, instrumental in providing that and sending that off. So it was, that's kind of the, the, the luck you were insinuating earlier. Is there luck? Yeah, we were lucky to find another, unfortunately another victim, but enough evidence to go forward and, and get that genetic match.
A
And that Memphis case you mentioned. So that was the rape of a 14 year old in Memphis in an incident where no one was murdered but four people were tied up and this teenager was attacked.
C
That's correct.
A
And did that just hit on CODIS as well?
C
It hit on CODIS and we both simultaneously got a call and said, hey, there's another case related to yours. Here's the case number, here's the contact information. And, and you know, we put ours out there, our contact information. So they reached out to us and we were able to work with them. We, we all met in Memphis and we went over their case and kind of started working again, pick, pulling somebody else, pull another agency in and you know, they were great to work with as well. So it was, it's, it's refreshing to have such good investigators to, to work alongside with and that, that are opened and sharing all the information.
A
Yeah, it sounds like some really great collaboration going on. I mean, I know it's easy in cases where you have a lot of, I'm sure type A personalities in different states there can be competitiveness, but it just seems like everything gelled here.
C
Yeah, it was, it was never, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. It was, let's work together and, and put this behind us. So it was always about a team effort. What's, what can we do to help each other out? Because we were all in different parts of the, you know, the southeast and just different parts of the, of the U. S And so it was, it was good to be able to go to different places and you know, we had three labs that we could go to at this point and to send a buckle swab off who's going to do it first? Because I know I've sent some to Missouri when they didn't have a backlog and they would jump right on it and exclude them. So.
A
And then I'm curious, did the Memphis, Tennessee case, did that provide any insights or any connective tissue between, you know, the very different cases in South Carolina and Missouri? Was there anything similar that patterns that were starting to emerge?
C
No, there was, that was another one that was. Why is this connected to ours? Because it was totally different than ours. You know, there was, there was. Wasn't a homicide that was. It was in a residence close to a populated street. So it was just, it was odd that all three of these were so different but yet connected.
A
And how did you feel when you got this alert that yet another case had matched?
C
It was, you know, since the. You never want a crime to occur, but since the crime already had occurred, it was nice to be able to put them together to use some other evidence that they may have that we didn't have the, that we hadn't collected earlier. So it was, it was nice to have more areas to work and more variety of the cases to see if we are. If there is one similar fact in there other than the DNA. So.
B
How was the decision made to bring in a Parabon?
C
So that was something that Memphis was looking at when they resubmitted a bunch of cases to their lab and I believe they had some grants and stuff and they said, hey, we're going to send it to Parabon. And we talked about the amount of DNA they had and they were, we have, they had more than they needed. And, and it was so that it was, it was kind of hey, we're going to do this. And we were like, let's do it. We have nothing to. To lose. We've got everything in the world to gain if we can, if we can get this. And, and you know, the. I didn't really know that much about the ways to search the different genetic databases and everything. So it was. Parabon is, is great on that. I didn't know anything about GEDmatch, which is a public site where you can dump your family history DNA in there to search publicly. So because Ancestry and 23andMe were strictly exclusive to the users themselves that could search and it would not, even with search warrants and everything, would not allow law enforcement to search their databases.
B
So.
A
Right. So tell us about the news that there's a match To a. Or I guess an indication of. Because I know it takes a while to confirm it, but that there's a name that kind of comes up in terms of these cases.
C
Yeah. So after we got that match, we're all on, you know, we're our respective agencies and on a. On a zoom and they give the name and. And we're all on our computer, like, running that name through our files and be like, oh, man, we didn't overlook that. You know, it's like, where did this guy come from? So, you know, it's like. It would have been very disappointing but satisfying when we got the name, but disappointing if that name was in the case file. And we're like, oh man, why didn't we go after that guy first? Or. But we all look, his name wasn't in the case file. And we started digging and Paragon puts a. A little booklet together of the history of them. And you know, one of the first things we do is we go run our. Run the criminal history to see where else he's been, because they're just going off the Internet and stuff. So we look and you know, he. He had a driver's license, you know, a half a mile from. From our crime scene. We can't find any records of him ever being in Greenville other than driver's license. And on that driver's license, it was a like 24 Pelham Road. And. And 25 was the apartment complex. So it didn't really even have the same. There is no 24 Pelham Road. So we assumed it was the apartment complex across the street. But getting a name to go with it, it was just. It was like, okay, it wasn't. It solved. It's okay. What can we do to make this 100% for sure match or our match. Our unknown DNA on these victims. So it wasn't. Wasn't great. Here we got Parabon's report and let's have a press conference. That's not how it was at all. We. We had a lot more work to do and confirm. And so we. After we got off the phone with Parabon, we stayed on and we came up with a game plan of what we're going to do and. And how quick we're going to work to get to where we need to be.
A
Can you tell us about what that. That game plan was and how it was executed?
C
Yes. So we decided to. We have a. We have DNA. We have an unknown DNA on three different crime scenes. So now we have a name to go with it. We are going to confirm that our unknown is a match to Mr. Brazier. So we said okay, his wife lives here, his do. He's got a daughter, he's got a brother. So we said well let's go get their DNA if they'll consent to it. And we did. We met up with all them all. They were all shocked when we told them what we were looking at. They all consented to a buccal swab. We each brought that back to our agencies and our labs ran that and they said your unknown and Rose produced the daughter. So they were 99.97% sure that our unknown DNA and his wife produced their daughter. So I said well that, that's good but after that let's, you know, let's, let's make sure. So we said well we're pretty confident in it and said well let's, let's go one step further and let's try to, let's exhume the body if we can. We found out where he was and we exhumed him the body in Arkansas and we were able to gain enough DNA evidence from his, from his body. We brought those pieces of evidence we collected back to our labs and that was, I think it was 1 in 67, quadrillion chances that it was an unknown, somebody different than Robert Brush or that DNA was in located autopsy.
A
Two follow up questions on that. Were you there were the exhumation?
C
I was.
A
What was that like?
C
It was, it was interesting. I mean, you know, I mean we had the FBI's evidence recovery team come to Arkansas. So it was a small cemetery. They had the excavator that, you know, he had a little tombstone with his name on it, looked like it was handwritten in a piece of cement his name. And they or brought the vault out, broke the vault open and were able, took the top off the vault and were able to open the casket inside the vault and gain the evidence we need needed from there. So it was, it was, it was interesting. It was, it wasn't about what we as investigators thought or you know, it was a, we're doing this for the victim's family so we can go to them and say definitively this person right here that died in 1999 is the one that committed these heinous crimes on your families.
A
And how did it feel once you got that conclusive confirmation that yes, this is.
C
Felt, you know, a relief going to the families, going to, you know, Jenny's brother, calling him and saying we know without a doubt this is who did that to Jenny. And it was, it was. It was good to hear him, you know, and just to give him that information.
A
Now that you know who Jenny's killer is, are there any things that you like? I mean, do you think that she was definitely his. His first murder?
C
I wouldn't say definitely. He had a very, very dark past. And I. I would say there's a probability of it. We know the first time or the first. We know of the first time he shot somebody and, and left her in a ditch to die. I don't know what happened before that. I mean, he's got connections to Louisiana. He was arrested in there. So did he do something in, in that state? I. I don't know. This is the first known murder that he's done. I hope it's the first. So there aren't other victims out there. But I, I can't say that it. Without a doubt it is.
A
And what. Why do you think. And maybe you have some insight into this just in other investigations you've done. Why do you think his modus operandi shifted so much?
C
I have no idea. I wish. I know that that's what was so hard for us to. To link the cases together. I wish I knew exactly what he was thinking. I just. I just don't.
A
So I think it'd probably be hard to understand even if he could tell us because it's not the way most people think. Probably. Does this change, does this, I guess, influence everyone's views now of some of the bizarre clues he left at Jenny's crime scene in terms of maybe he was just trying to throw people off.
C
You know, that's. I think it. Yes, I think it definitely looking back at the clues he left there, I think a lot of it was destruction of evidence, the water and the wiping of surfaces. But the latent print in the message on the mirror, I think those were in the staged robbery. I think those were just all red herrings.
A
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And you know, I know back in 2018, you gave a comment to the press talking about how Jenny was very outgoing. You know, she'd have people in and out of her apartment. You know, especially at pool parties, people could come in and use the rest room. Do you think it's possible that Brashers kind of was able to interact with her in that way, or do you think it's possible he just came by and just picked an apartment?
C
I don't think he interacted with her because it was a close type group of people over there. So I don't think he interacted with her. I don't think he went in her apartment. I think he may have been looking from the outside, looking in and just seeing how. How active she was and just targeted her. That's my opinion. I can't say for sure that's what happened, but I would. I don't think it was just a random apartment he came up to. I think he probably knew she was a single female living in that apartment by herself. Just the way that the door is pried open and she was attacked immediately once upon entry, during her sleep.
A
And then was there anything else you were able to discover about this offender that you thought was interesting or, you know, you mentioned his dark past. He really did have quite a violent criminal history. But was there anything that stood out to you is about who this person is?
C
Wish I knew who he was and how he thought. I know, just a drifter just going around and targeting innocent people, you know, just for his own satisfaction. Just a very, very evil person, in my opinion. So.
B
I think back to the press conference in 2018, when of course, Jenny's brother Philip spoke. And at one point he said, 28 years. It's been a long time. It's been time enough for trails to go cold. We thank you for your persistence, your teamwork, and your zeal to proceed. What was it like hearing that from a family member?
C
So I have worked other homicides, so. And you have to break the bad news to people or. And you have to give them the. The news of, hey, we've got the person that did this to your child. So it.
B
That.
C
That's a feeling that I've heard before or that's a statement that I've heard very similar to before. And it's. It's always good to know that the family really, really respects and, and you know, and, and we talked to them and you know, after the match and we said we won't stop, we won't give up. And I'm just glad that we were able to. We wouldn't have ever stopped. We wouldn't have ever given up. But I'm glad to say, hey, not only did we not stop and give up, this is the person that did this. So it's always very, very satisfying to hear somebody say that. It's, you know, it kind of gives you. Gives you chill clumps to. Just to hear that from the families.
A
It really seemed like this was something the Greenville Police Department just never was going to let go of. And I guess what has the. Solving this case meant to just the whole organization including some of those retired investigators who may worked on it.
C
So I talked to a couple of the retired investigators and thank them for the diligence and hard work they did and putting their notes together because a cold case is only as good as the, the case file itself. So. And the forensics investigators for having the foresight to collect evidence and preserve the evidence. Because without that we wouldn't know, we wouldn't have gotten the, the DNA sample. When I was in investigations, I kind of oversaw the cold case unit. And we, there was three individuals, two of them are still, are currently here still. And we would sit down when we had a case, we'd say, hey, let's look at this case now. And we would. The way we work with cold cases is we individually read the entire case file, go over it several times, read it because you pick something else up every time you read it. And then we would sit, make a list of questions individually or ideas what we're going to do. And then we would sit around the table, discuss the case and say, hey, these are ideas I think we should do. And we would all have different ideas. Some, some were very similar. So we'd obviously focus on those because we thought it was important to all of us. So. And that's how we worked. We, I figured, or I thought that worked really well when we did that. And we've had some good luck with solving cold cases when I was up there. And it's just a team effort to sit there and you can't say, no, I'm going to do it my way. Let's do it as a team effort and work towards solving the case.
A
It seems like at every step this was a team effort in terms of working with other agencies and working within the same agency.
C
Yes, that's. And again, going back, it's all agencies that worked on this case. It was never about a single agency or a single investigator. It was always, hey, let's work for the families and solve this as a team. And that's, I mean, that's how we got to the conclusion that we did.
A
Absolutely. And would you have any advice for other agencies that are perhaps trying to start looking at some of their cold cases and maybe apply some of these same techniques that you guys did.
C
I'm no expert in it, so. But if I could give a little tidbit of advice is technology is ever evolving. Resubmit your evidence to your lab if you don't have a big enough lab. I'm sure there are grants out there. I know there are grants out There that can take this evidence and send it off to labs. Resubmit your evidence, get it on codis, get your firearms or your shell casings, your ballistics, get those in the, in the national database to niven for firearms, see if there are any other matches out there and continue to CODIS will run all the time. But resubmit re enter into kniving the ballistics and maybe there's another gun that's been added in or a shell case that'll match some other crime and you know, just be persistent, don't, don't give up. Just let technology advance and try to keep up with it and you know.
A
Right. It's dynamic, evolving situations where as, as in this case, you know, nothing could have proceeded without Memphis, Tennessee coming out and uploading some of their DNA that then everyone could use.
C
Correct? That is right. I mean, you know, it's unfortunate that there was another victim, but fortunately we were able to get the, the closure on those cases with mental Memphis DNA.
A
And then I suppose, you know, the one thing that's come out in the news recently is that Brashers has been linked to this horrific 1991 homicide at the Austin yogurt shop that's sort of been infamous for years. And now DNA and ballistics have linked him and it sounds like there may be more that are going to be linked to him by the time this is all over. How did hearing that news affect you?
C
So when I got a call from our lab in Columbia, South Carolina, they said, hey, we've got another case that matches. It's out of Austin, Texas. And they don't, they don't go into details, they just say, here's a match and they're gonna. Can I pass your number on? So it was later that evening I got a call from Austin and fortunately we were, they were, they got a match off of a YSTR that we uploaded rather than full DNA and you know, just goes, goes back to the, to the luck of the draw. You know, we had a great analyst down there and she uploaded the YSTR just to see if there's any other connections. And, and knowing that the full DNA profile is uploaded as well. But, but the Y is the male chromosome. So it's the same YSDR through your father, your grandfather, your son. So that's. That YSDR is what matched with Austin. So again, going back to luck, yes, a great job in putting that YSDR up. Uploaded CODIS and with Austin being able to get enough, not a full profile, but get that YSTR uploaded to us and we were able to work with them to. To get them the evidence they needed, so. To help them close their case now.
A
Wow, that's amazing. And yeah, maybe a lesson to other laboratories to upload their ystr because I know it's. It's not considered the best because it's not unique to a person, but it can help another case out if that's all they have.
C
Yes, correct. I mean, it's. And I don't. I'm. I'm no DNA expert, it. By any means. So I don't know what the ca. What you can upload, what you can't. What, how small, how. How large. But yeah, there was a. The ysdr, the male chromosome was uploaded and that's very, very fortunate that she had the insight to do that, I guess.
A
Did that case surprise you? Just because again, it looks even more different. It's. It's in a retail establishment.
C
Retail establishment fire. And that's when I talked to the investigator and I won't go into much of their case and all that, but it's was very shocking to hear that it matched ours. Just again, so many different. Different types of, you know, the fire. It just, you know, not a very populated strip mall. It just didn't seem like they were connected at all.
A
Absolutely.
B
Is.
A
Is there anything we wanted that you wanted to say or that we didn't ask you about that you wanted to mention before we close out?
C
It's. I appreciate everything. Thank you.
B
Thank you.
A
All right, take care. Have a good one. Thank you. Thank you so much to Lieutenant Conroy. We really appreciate his service and his diligent work on this case. And the Greenville Police Department as a whole deserves to be commended. They never let this one go. They hung onto it for years, and by working together and with other agencies, they got it solved.
B
Thanks so much for listening to the murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us@murdersheetmail.com. if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.
A
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B
Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the murder sheet and who you can find on the web@kevintg.com.
A
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C
Here we have the Limu Imu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu.
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C
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Podcast: Murder Sheet
Episode: First Person: Lieutenant Tim Conroy of the Greenville Police Department
Date: October 14, 2025
Guests: Lieutenant Tim Conroy (Greenville Police)
Hosts: Áine Cain & Kevin Greenlee
This episode explores the tragic 1990 murder of Genevieve “Jenny” Zitricki and its eventual linkage to serial killer Robert Eugene Brashers. The focus is on investigative persistence, the development of forensic science, and cross-state teamwork that led to the resolution of a cold case—with unique insights from Lieutenant Tim Conroy of the Greenville Police Department. The discussion also covers Brashers’ broader crimes, including connections to the Sharer double homicide, the Memphis attack, and Austin’s infamous Yogurt Shop Murders.
On the initial forensic confusion:
“The latent print in the message on the mirror, I think those were… just all red herrings.” – Lt. Conroy [55:39]
On seeing the exhumation of Brashers:
“He had a little tombstone with his name on it, looked like it was handwritten… They broke the vault open,… opened the casket… It wasn’t about what we as investigators thought… it was for the victim’s family.” – Lt. Conroy [52:24–53:28]
On cross-jurisdictional teamwork:
“It was never, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that. It was, let’s work together and put this behind us.” – Lt. Conroy [44:40]
Advice for other agencies:
“Resubmit your evidence to your lab… There are grants out there. ... Just be persistent, don’t give up. Just let technology advance and try to keep up with it.” – Lt. Conroy [61:58]
On closure for families:
“‘28 years. It’s been a long time. Time enough for trails to go cold. We thank you for your persistence, your teamwork, and your zeal to proceed.’” – Jenny’s brother Philip Zitricki, as referenced by the hosts [57:47]