Cold Cases Solved In 2020
It would be a major understatement to say that 2020 wasn’t such a great year. We’ve all been through a lot and we most definitely have our fingers crossed for a better new year. However, we try to look for the silver lining of every cloud and in 2020, the true-crime world experienced some victories in what was otherwise a pretty shitty year. Today, I’m going to tell you about some cold cases that were finally solved in 2020. Some were solved with DNA, some from brand new investigations done years after the crime took place and others seem to have been sheer luck. Let’s take a look at a few of these now solved cases.
On Oct. 24th, 1996, at about 8 a.m, the body of 25-year-old Tangie Sims was found in an alley in Aurora, Colorado. The killer had cut himself during the murder and left drops of blood at the scene. Samples were taken for evidence and it was believed that the blood would lead them to a suspect but the case eventually went cold. In late 2019, there was a break in the case. Using advanced DNA testing and genealogical research, the blood samples they took in 1996 led to a close relative of the killer. By January 2020 authorities had named Wesley Backman as the suspect in Sims’ murder. Backman was a truck driver that had lived in many places including Aurora. He was 64 when he died in 2008. DNA testing is currently being used to see if Backman was responsible for any other unsolved murders.
46-year-old Vanessa Smallwood walked out of a Cherry Hill, NJ dry cleaner’s on January 27th, 2014, and disappeared with the 2005 Chrysler Town and Country van she was driving that day. Smallwood seemed to have vanished without a trace and over the course of the next 6 years, her disappearance remained a mystery. On January 17th, 2020 a group of commercial divers were working to clear debris from the Salem River in NJ, when they found the 2005 Chrysler with the remains of Vanessa Smallwood inside. Her family still has no idea what happened on the day she went missing in 2014 and her cause of death wasn’t released, but authorities say that based on the medical examiner’s exam, foul play is not suspected in her death.
The body of 30-year-old Weldon Mills was found, with a gunshot wound to the back of his neck, in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Georgia on September 20th, 2002. Nobody was ever charged in his murder and the case went cold. In 2019 the supervisor of the Cold Case Unit decided to go back and take a fresh look at the case. The supervisor and an investigator from the DA’s office traveled to several different states to conduct interviews. Some of the people they spoke to were never interviewed in 2002 when Weldon Mills was killed. The new interviews gave them probable cause to arrest and charge 43-year-old Titus Norwood with murder and aggravated assault but they had to find him first. He was finally located and arrested on March 25th, 2020, almost 18 years after murdering Weldon Mills.
On June 22, 2020, 40-year-old Dammon Wright turned himself into the Mobile County Metro Jail in Alabama for the murder of Marcel Chandler which occurred on December 13th, 1999. He was charged with murder. The following day, Mobile Alabama police signed a murder warrant for the arrest of 42-year-old Jamelle Thomas who was already incarcerated on unrelated charges. Authorities say that on December 13th, 1999, 24-year-old Marcel Chandler, who had a 4-year-old son at the time, was murdered by Wright and Thomas. It’s not clear why Wright turned himself in, but it led to the case being solved after over 20 years.
Nine-year-old Christine Jessop went missing on Oct. 3, 1984, in Queensville, Ontario, Canada. Christine was supposed to meet her friend at a nearby park but she never showed up. The last time Christine was seen, she was buying a pack of gum at a local store, close to her house. Her body wasn’t found until almost 3 months later, on New Year’s Eve. She had been raped and murdered. Police thought they had their man and arrested a neighbor of the Jessop’s, Guy Morin, for the murder but he ended up being exonerated and released from prison in 1995 thanks to advancements in DNA testing used on a DNA sample taken from Christine’s underwear. Police announced that Calvin Hoover was matched as Christine’s rapist and killer using genetic genealogy. Hoover was a friend of the Jessop family and was 28 at the time of the murder. He died in 2015.
In 1995, the body of Christopher Dailey was found with a single gunshot wound and his car was partially submerged in the Tennessee River. The case was investigated but the police never had a suspect and eventually, the case went cold. Through the years the case was re-examined several times and leads were followed up on, but there was still no suspect. In November 2020, 25 years after Christopher Dailey was murdered, 53-year-old John Dwight Whited called the Decatur Police Department and confessed. Whited knew details that only the killer would know. He was arrested and charged with murder. He is currently detained at the Morgan County Jail, awaiting a court date.
On May 10, 1991, police in Spring Hill, Tennessee found the body of 33-year-old Pamela McCall who was from Topping, Virginia. Her clothes were torn and she had injuries to her neck and face. Her autopsy revealed that she was 24 weeks pregnant when she was strangled to death. According to witnesses, McCall was possibly traveling with a truck driver when she was killed. Although an extensive investigation was done, there was never an arrest made in the case. In April 2019, the Spring Hill police asked the DA’s office for help to reopen the investigation. DNA evidence taken from the scene in 1991 was submitted to the TBI Crime Laboratory for analysis and a full DNA profile of a white man was developed. The profile was submitted to CODIS and it was matched to DNA recovered at two more unsolved murders in Wyoming. In the end, 59-year-old Clark Baldwin, a former truck driver living in Waterloo, Iowa was determined to be the suspected serial killer. On May 6th, 2020 Baldwin was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the death of Pamela McCall and her unborn child as well as first-degree murder charges for the 2 homicides in Wyoming.
On August 15th, 2010, the body of Luis Victor Mendoza was found in an irrigation canal in Buckeye, Arizona. He had been shot 4 times. The investigators on the case identified a possible suspect after conducting witness interviews but the Buckeye police say that their leads dried up and the case went cold. In July 2020, the Major Crimes Unit reopened the investigation. They went back and spoke to the key witnesses in the case and every one of them identified the killer as Antonio Padilla. Padilla allegedly killed Mendoza after a confrontation in a Phoenix home on August 14th, 2010, and then had the witnesses clean up and help him dispose of Mendoza’s body. He threatened to kill them and their family members if anyone ever told what happened. On July 22nd, 2020, 42-year-old Antonio Padilla was taken into custody during a traffic stop and charged with 1st-degree murder. He had a loaded semi-automatic rifle with him at the time of his arrest.
26-year-old Anita Louise Piteau was from Augusta, Maine. In 1967 she traveled to California with friends and was working as a waitress. In February 1968 she sent her mom a letter and told her that she would be returning home to Maine in May of that year. Anita never returned home and her family never saw or heard from her again. On March 14th, 1968, 3 young boys were playing in a field in Huntington Beach, California found a body. The woman had been beaten, raped and her neck had been slashed but the police couldn’t identify her. They found a cigarette butt near her body and collected it as evidence, but they were never able to identify a suspect either. The woman was buried in an unmarked grave and she became Orange County’s oldest Jane Doe case. In 2001, a male DNA profile was put together but they still couldn’t find a suspect. In 2010, the cigarette butt was analyzed and a male DNA profile that was consistent with the first one emerged, but there was still no match to a suspect. At the same time, the victim’s fingerprints were entered into state and national databases but she was still unable to be identified. In 2019, authorities used genetic genealogy to build a family tree based on the DNA profile they had put together and in July 2020 this led to the identification of a man named Johnny Chrisco, who died of cancer in 2015 as Piteau’s killer. There was no real justice in this case but at the very least, Anita Piteau’s surviving family finally knows what happened to her and they were able to bring her home to Maine and lay her to rest.
At the time of her murder in 1995, Christine Munro was a 37-year-old nurse and mom of four, living in Redding, California. She was jogging along the Sacramento River Trail when she was brutally stabbed to death. After her body was found someone made a confession, but police said there wasn’t enough evidence to try him and it turned out to be a false confession. In 2020, more than 25 years after Munro’s murder, new DNA testing techniques were used and in October, police identified 42 year old James Watkins of Texas as the killer. Watkins is currently in prison in Texas for robbery charges and has been charged with the murder of Christine Munro.
On March 9th, 1970 the body of 23-year-old Betty Lee Jones was found on the side of an embankment on Highway 128 in Colorado. Jones had been bound, sexually assaulted, strangled, and shot to death. She had last been seen with her new husband outside their home. They had been arguing for a couple of days and her husband got in the car and took off. Betty flagged down a blue sedan and got in. It was the last time she was seen alive. In 2006 the case was reopened and a male DNA profile was put together but it wasn’t a match to anyone. There were then 6 possible suspects developed, 1 of them was Robert Jones, Betty’s husband who died in 2000. DNA was collected from his parents and the 5 other potential suspects but none of them were a match. In 2019, the suspect’s DNA to develop a family tree. This family tree led to a few living relatives of the suspect who told police about their estranged brother, Paul Leroy Martin. It turns out that Martin had just recently died. On April 8th, 2020, the body of Paul Leroy Martin was exhumed for DNA samples to be taken and on April 24th the Colorado Bureau of Investigations notified the Boulder County Sheriff’s Department that the DNA was a match to the DNA taken from Betty Lee Jones’ body. After 50 years, this cold case was finally solved.
With these cases being solved, a little bit of justice and maybe some closure for the families was finally served. That’s what we live for. I say this a lot, but we’re not just some creepy ladies that like crime, we want to continue to raise awareness and be advocates for victims and their loved ones every single day. With new advancements happening in DNA testing every day and so many people working diligently for justice, we hope to see many more cold cases solved in 2021.
If you’d like to hear more about the new advancements in DNA testing check out our interview with David Mittleman, the CEO of Othram Laboratories. They are helping to solve so many of these cold cases with their DNA testing techniques and the work they do is amazing. We also started a brand new podcast, Gone Cold with The Good Wives and Todd Matthews. Todd is the former director of NAMUS and the man that solved the Tent Girl cold case. We decided to work together to bring more awareness to missing people and unsolved cases.
For more true crime, subscribe to our YouTube channel, Murder By Design, download The Good Wives Guide To True Crime podcast, and like us on Facebook at By Proxy. As always you can get a taste of everything we have on our plate by visiting the Mad Ginger Entertainment website.
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Originally published at https://madgingerentertainment.com.
