Stephen Gresko 18 min

In Plain Sight: Serial Killers Hiding in Prison


This talk will cover the Nevada offender DNA collection program and how the failure to apply the law retroactively severely delayed the identification of two serial killers.



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Hi, welcome to HIDS.

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I want to thank Thermal Fisher for inviting me to be a part of this conference

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today.

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And I want to tell you a story about the offender program and how it impacted

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our state.

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My name is Steve Gresko.

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I'm the supervising criminalist with the Washoe County Sheriff's Office.

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And I'm also the co-disadministrator for the state of Nevada.

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So to tell this story, I think we need to start by talking about a homicide

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that occurred in February of 1976.

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As a young student at the University of Nevada, Reno, named Michelle Mitchell.

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She was coming home from class one day and went to her car and was broken down.

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So she went and found a payphone, no cell phones in 1976.

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Went and found a payphone and called her mother.

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Her mother was to the university within 15 minutes of that phone call and found

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Michelle's car but could not find Michelle.

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Michelle was found later that night in a garage of a home,

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approximately 300 feet from where her car had broken down.

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And she had been stabbed in the neck multiple times and she was dead.

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Detectives did everything they could to try and find a suspect that very little

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to work with.

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And ultimately the case went cold.

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Approximately three years later, 1979, there was a woman in a mental health

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facility in Louisiana.

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Who told one of her counselors that she had killed a woman in Reno in 1976.

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So the counselor contacted the police in Reno who were very interested to talk

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to this woman.

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This woman's name was Kathy Woods.

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Kathy Woods was brought back to Reno and she was ultimately convicted of that

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crime.

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There wasn't a lot of physical evidence to link her to the crime and she was

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primarily convicted based on the strength of her.

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She was a very good confession.

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She stayed in prison and almost immediately after being convicted, recanted.

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In fact, I think she recanted before she was convicted, but it didn't matter.

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She went to prison.

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If you fast forward to 2013, she was able to get the Innocence Project to help

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her with her efforts to try and get her a case looked at again.

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We did in conjunction with the Innocence Project.

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She went through an inventory of evidence and found that there was a cigarette,

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but that was found underneath the body of Michelle Mitchell and the homeowners

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were not smokers.

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So it was pretty good evidence.

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We were successful in getting a partial profile.

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We put that into CODIS and we got a hit to some DNA profiles out of the Bay

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Area.

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We didn't know exactly what that hit was going to mean when it happened, but

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you should know that when it

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CODIS administrator comes in, most CODIS administrators come into work in the

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morning.

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The first thing they're doing is checking their match manager to see if they

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have anything that's hit.

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We didn't get any hits within our own state, but we got one to California.

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The California people were immediately calling our laboratory because this was

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a very significant match for them.

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When we looked at it, we found out that our male DNA profile from that

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cigarette butt in that garage matched to the sexual assault.

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The sexual assault evidence from a series of rape and homicides out of the Bay

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Area.

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They'd even given this serial killer a name.

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They named him the Gypsy Hill killer.

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We knew that we had a problem because we had a woman who had been in prison for

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over 30 years for a crime that given this DNA match seemed very unlikely that

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she was the one that had killed Michelle Mitchell.

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A task force was created. The FBI got involved. They had not had any links to

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that series of homicides outside of the Bay Area.

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All of those homicides happened in the winter of 1976.

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So right around the same time that Michelle Mitchell was killed in February, it

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all fit perfectly within that string of homicides.

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Four or five of them in the Bay Area and then one in Reno.

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There was a lot in the news about that, but ultimately nothing came of it. We

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had these cases that we knew were linked through DNA, but we still did not have

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a person to match to those DNA profiles.

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And as everyone knows, a DNA profile is only as good as the reference sample

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that you can match it to.

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We knew the DNA profile of the potential killer, but we did not know his

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identity.

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So the case went cold.

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It was approximately a year out of the blue.

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We get a DNA hit to our profile from the Michelle Mitchell homicide and the Gy

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psy Hill profiles that the California people had.

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And it was to a convicted offender out of the state of Oregon.

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When we looked into this, we realized that this offender had been in a Nevada

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prison for over 30 years.

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30 years that this person was sitting right under our noses.

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And we didn't know that who he was or what he had done via his DNA profile.

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To understand how this could have happened, you really need to go back to the

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beginnings of the DNA offender collection law in the state of Nevada.

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Modern DNA technology started in the early 80s, but didn't really become

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widespread, particularly with STRs and tell them in 90s.

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But the Nevada legislature was forward looking, and in 1989 they passed the

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offender collection law.

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Unfortunately, it was very limited in its scope.

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It only covered the collection of people who were convicted of sex crimes.

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Didn't even include people convicted of homicide.

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Very limited to just people convicted of sex crimes.

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The Nevada legislature only meets every other year.

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Nevada didn't even have a DNA lab in the state, an operational one at the time.

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It wouldn't be until the late 90s that the Washoe County Sheriff's Office came

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online with DNA technology.

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We had laws that allowed us to collect these samples, but we didn't have the

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ability to get DNA profiles from them and put them into CODIS.

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Each legislative session, the politicians would get together and discuss an

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expansion of the scope of the collection.

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They added homicide in 1997. They eventually got around to all felons in 2007,

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and we actually added felony arrestees in 2014.

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When we came online as a laboratory to begin receiving these offender samples

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that were collected from the prisons and putting them into CODIS, we didn't

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know if we should be collecting everyone, or just people who were convicted

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after that law was passed in 1989.

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We sought an opinion from the Attorney General at that time, and their

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determination believed that unless the law specifically stated that we could

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collect retroactively, that we could only apply it prospectively.

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That means that if I receive a sample from somebody who committed a homicide in

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the 1980s, they don't qualify for collection because they committed their crime

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before our legislature got elected.

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The legislature got around to including it in our law. When I first started at

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the sheriff's office as the CODIS administrator, we would receive offender

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samples from people.

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We would get it in the mail and look at it. Oh, wow, this guy was, he served

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all a 30 year sentence for homicide.

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And now he's being released. He's paid his debt to society.

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And we have a DNA sample from him, but we were not allowed to put those into C

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ODIS. In fact, we had to destroy them. And that practice went on for decades.

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A lot of people got released from prison who had been convicted of very serious

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crimes, had served substantial sentences, and we didn't have a way to get their

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DNA into the system.

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That kind of explains why Rodney Halbauer was in prison in Nevada for 30 plus

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years and never had his DNA collected until he went to the state of Oregon.

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That's an interesting story in and of itself.

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Rodney Halbauer was the man who killed Michelle Mitchell. It's the man who was

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known as the Gypsy Hill Killer. His story is a pretty fascinating one.

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He is originally from Michigan. I was in and out of juvenile detention

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facilities, regular correctional facilities, and had quite a talent for

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escaping.

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He escaped multiple times over his young life until he found himself in the

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Reno and Northern California areas in his late 20s. He actually was caught

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sexual assaulting a black check dealer in Reno in November of 1975.

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He was immediately arrested for that, but made bail from November of 1975, the

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first of the Gypsy Hill killings in the Bay Area started happening the first

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week of January.

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He was raping and murdering somebody about every two weeks from January of 1976

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until he actually came back for his trial and was convicted and put in jail in

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May of 1976.

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He was very busy to say the least in that time while his trial, waiting for his

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trial to occur. Be that as it may, he went into the system in Nevada in the, I

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think it was July, June or July of 1976 he went to prison.

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And there he stayed until he escaped from prison in 1986 with another inmate.

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They stole a car and made their way up to Oregon, where four days after

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escaping he attacked the woman up there and tried to kill her.

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He survived, but they caught him and convicted him of that and he was given a

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30 year sentence in Oregon, but they sent him back to Nevada to finish serving

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his time until he had to go and pay his debt to the state of Oregon.

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It was bad that he escaped. It was bad that he attacked that woman, but it was

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good for solving all of these crimes that he had to go to Oregon when he was

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done here. Otherwise he would have just been released and we still wouldn't

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have been able to collect his DNA sample.

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For me, it was very difficult to know that we had this person sitting under our

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noses all this time. Who knows, they may have even collected his DNA sample and

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sent it to us before they sent him to Oregon.

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And we would have taken that and thrown it away. And that seemed a big problem

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to me.

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Soon after I started as the co-administrator, I had sent a letter to the

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Attorney General requesting a review of our database law and never heard back

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from that.

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And I thought, given this event, we might have a little political capital to

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try and ask this question again of our Attorney General. So we typed up a

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letter and sent it to through our legal counsel, our District Attorney's Office

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, and had them officially request an opinion,

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a new opinion from the Attorney General at the time. The Attorney General

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reviewed it, our database law, and ultimately agreed that the original intent

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of the legislators back in 1989 was that this should apply to anybody who was

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in prison and gave us the authority to collect retroactively for anybody who

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was currently incarcerated.

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He did not expand that to people who had been paroled, but this was still a big

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step for us that we could go into our prisons and collect DNA sample from folks

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who owed us one. And so that's what we did.

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We reached out to the Department of Corrections, and we trained all of their

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people.

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We got the necessary software into their facilities, train their personnel on

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how to collect, and we began the process of finding out who we still needed to

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get a sample from.

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Initial lists thought that it could be as high as 8,000 inmates that hadn't

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been collected, but through some filtering and vetting we ultimately settled on

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a little more than 1,200 people who had been in prison for quite some time,

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and still had not had a DNA sample collected. And we started collecting them in

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April of 2018. It went fairly quickly. I think we were completely done

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collecting all 1200 by the end of the summer.

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That thought that had been in my mind that whole time. What if there was

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somebody else in our database or in our prison system, who if we had them in

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our database, we would get another big hit in July of 2018.

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Before I even had a chance to sit down and make my coffee in the morning, my

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phone starts ringing, and it's a very excited co-disaminitrator in the Denver

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area.

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And wants to know about an offender hit that we had just uploaded. Sure enough,

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it's one of these retroactive offenders that we had collected uploaded the

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night before, and it hit to a massive case out of the Denver area.

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Another serial killer by the name of Christopher Ewing. He had also been given

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a nickname of the Denver Hammerslayer. This is a case that took place in the

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Denver area in the winter of 1984.

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Mr Ewing, over the course of two weeks, broke into several homes. One of the

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homes was the home of a woman by the name of Patricia Smith. He sexually

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assaulted and bludgeoned her to death with a hammer. Very brutal and shocking

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crime. Four or five days later, he broke into another home, the Bennett family, young

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daughter, seven and three years old, the mom and the dad. He sexually assaulted

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the seven year old and the mother bludgeoned all of them to death, tried to

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kill the three year old.

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Miraculously, she survived and then disappeared. Again, the police had very

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little evidence at the time, 1984. This is before DNA. Didn't have a lot to

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link or investigate this person and were truly confused how this series of

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crimes could go on and then just

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stopped cold. Mr Ewing fled the Denver area almost immediately after the last

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homicide. He made his way to Arizona. And within days of those Denver homicides

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, he broke into a home in Kingman, Arizona and tried to bludgeon a man to death

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with the stone.

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The man fought him back and was able to get Mr Ewing to leave, but he was

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caught by police. They arrested him and didn't have room for him there. So they

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transported him to St. George Utah to be held until he was ready for his trial.

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When Mr Ewing was brought back from St. George, they traveled through Las Vegas

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to bring him back to St. trial in Arizona. And while on a bathroom break in Las

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Vegas, he escaped.

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He found an axe handle.

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He found an axe husband and a wife in the Henderson area. They made a wife in

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the Henderson area.

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They were able to chase him off. He did not kill that couple, but made enough

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noise that he got scared and tried to run. The police caught him and arrested

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him.

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He was convicted and given a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

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Again, we had a situation where this guy was committing the Denver Hammer

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Slayer series in January.

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And by the summer of 84, he is arrested in Nevada and never released. He is

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convicted and sent to prison to serve a lengthy sentence, but we're not able to

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collect his DNA.

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He's able to hide in our prison system for 30 plus years until we finally get

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around to retroactively collecting these samples and putting them in our

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database.

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Rodney Halbauer was extradited back to the state of California for the Gypsy

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Hill series, and he was convicted of that and is serving time in California for

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that now.

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Christopher Ewing was convicted of the Bennett homicides last summer of 2021

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and is still pending his trial for the homicide of Patricia Smith.

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We had 10 codicids, a couple of homicides, several sexual assaults, some

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robberies that we got out of that retroactive collection effort. For me, very

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satisfying to know that we were able to finally go back in.

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And at least we know there's nobody that's hiding in our prison system for

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future considerations.

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It still bothers me that so many people were released paroled or had served all

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over their time, and we're still not able to go and collect them. So we still

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have some work to do in the state of Nevada to adjust our laws so that we're

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able to go and collect those

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examples. Hopefully we can get that effort done in this next legislative

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session. Another plan that I have is to go in and work with medical examiner's

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office.

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Anytime an inmate passes away in prison. They always do an autopsy and collect

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a blood spot card. So there's a good collection of offender samples in the form

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of blood spot cards in our medical examiner's offices that I am hoping to get a

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call going to go and collect those and get them entered into our convicted

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defender database. That's all I have to tour for the defender database. That's

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all I have today. I appreciate your time and your attention. Thank you.

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