When 16 year old high schoolers Eric Goldstrand and Lliana Adank were shot to death in at the popular Fall Creek recreation area in June 1977, residents of the teens’ hometown of Eugene, Oregon were shocked and devastated. There were hundreds of witnesses, tips, and leads… a surplus of information that led investigators nowhere. Suspect after suspect failed to pan out, and the case went cold for years, then decades. Extensive investigation into similar campground murders of couples also led nowhere. Finally, a cold case detective determined to solve the murders was able to employ forensic genealogy to identify a potential suspect, who was alive and living in another state. Investigators closed in on him, but he knew they were coming.

On April 15, 1997, a young boy in Union Grove, Alabama decided to skip school and go fishing at his favorite spot off of Eagle Rock Drive. When he got to his spot, he made a gruesome discovery. He found a decomposing body in the water, and raced home to tell his parents. Police responded to the scene, and when they retrieved the body from the water, the gruesome find became even more shocking. The body, which belonged to a man, had been mutilated. His hands, feet, and head had been removed. In addition, his heart had also been taken. It was believed that he had been shot or stabbed to death. There was no ID with the body, and in the days before DNA, there wasn't much that the authorities could do to identify the man. Their best guess was that he was a White male between 20 and 30 years old, who weighed about 150 pounds and was five feet, nine inches tall. Since police had no missing men in that area who fit that description, they believed he was traveling through the area, and not a local. Their only clues were a bunch of air fresheners found close to the victim, and an eyewitness who spotted a very distinct truck in the area before the body was found.

The brutal 1971 murder of Rita Curran in her own bedroom rocked the tight-knit town of Burlington, Vermont. The circumstances of Rita’s death seemed so random – yet pointed to an insider. The mystifying slaying had no apparent motive and no good leads, and perplexed generations of frustrated investigators. The case was so out there, Ted Bundy was considered a viable suspect, with good reason. Fifty years later, modern DNA technology would reach back in time and give a name to Rita’s killer, helping finally to assuage the heartache of Rita’s family and allowing Burlingtonians to put the tragic murder in their midst behind them.