Bloodline Detectives - Episode 2 - Murder in the Snow | Forensic Files

I'm Nancy Grace. And this is "Bloodline Detectives." You've heard the phrase, it takes
a village to raise a child. I like to think it takes a community to solve a crime.
When cases are tough, evidence is scarce, and there just doesn't seem to be a path toward closure,
it can be easy to give up unless the community cares. That's the way it was in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin.
Murders were not common here. When an 18-year-old girl is killed on a cold night in December 1984, people are scared.
But it doesn't mean they look the other way, not then, and not for more than three decades
when finally, their determination and the new forensic science of the bloodline detectives
close a case that the community could not forget. December 1984, a resident of Ozaukee County, Wisconsin,
makes a gruesome discovery in their own driveway. It's the dead body of a woman.
BRYAN POLCYN: She is laying in the snow. Her clothes are mostly off. Her head is bloodied.
There's blood spattered in the snow and on the trees. NANCY GRACE: The victim, it emerges, has been to a party.
BRYAN POLCYN: Where she went after that and how she ended up in the driveway she did was the 35-year mystery.
NANCY GRACE: Her murder sends shockwaves throughout the county. TARA KELLY: There was a severe fear among the community.
And they wanted to know that this person wasn't walking the streets. NANCY GRACE: A major investigation
is launched with hundreds of suspects eliminated. BRYAN POLCYN: M They had a lot of possible suspects.
But one by one, blood typing alone was able to eliminate most of them. NANCY GRACE: In 2019, detectives,
determined to find the killer, turn to a new groundbreaking DNA method. This is the story of Traci Hammerberg,
her random and brutal killing, how the perpetrator evaded detection for decades, and how his identity
was eventually uncovered by the bloodline detectives. JEFF TAYLOR: We were invested in this case from day one.
And we're not going to let it go. [MUSIC PLAYING] NANCY GRACE: On December 15, 1984, Ozaukee County,
Wisconsin sheriffs get an emergency call. JAMES JOHNSON: There was a resident on Maple Road
in the town of Grafton that was on his way to get his early morning newspaper. And he came across the body of a young girl.
BRYAN POLCYN: She is laying in the snow. Her clothes are mostly off. Her head is bloodied.
There's blood spattered in the snow and on the trees. So he returned back to the home
and then called the sheriff's office and notified us. After that, he went back and stayed with the body
until the sheriff's office could arrive. NANCY GRACE: When police arrive at the scene,
it's unclear if the young woman is still alive. But it is immediately apparent she has
suffered a ferocious assault. JAMES JOHNSON: There was some talk by the resident who found her that he
thought he heard breathing. So they did contact rescue and rescue attempts were made.
But she was found to be dead. TARA KELLY: The victim was lying on her back, and her arms and legs were spread to the sides.
And she was half naked from the waist down, apart from her socks, which had been partially removed.
Her jacket, scarf, and sweater had been pulled up over her head, exposing her chest and breasts.
SCOTT HELLER: She had blows to the right side of her skull. I mean, it was brutal.
It was-- it was-- it was horrible. FREDERICK MEULLER: And I froze the scene and I called for help--
other investigators and the state crime lab. NANCY GRACE: Backup teams and forensics arrive
and start processing the scene. They are quick to find what appears to be evidence.
JAMES JOHNSON: They located tire impressions in the snow. There was a fresh snowfall that occurred over the evening.
And there was also blood splatters in the snow as well as in the trees. TARA KELLY: Police noticed that there was a packet of Marlboro
cigarettes inches away from the victim. And that was bagged for evidence. She had a men's sapphire high school ring on her hand.
And on one side, it said Bowdoin High 1983. And on the other, it said Glen '83. And her clothing had been thrown near her head.
Her jeans, her shoes were all recovered at the scene. There's no murder weapon. There's nothing left behind to say this is what was used.
But it was clear she was beaten, brutally to death. TARA KELLY: Her hands were bagged
to preserve any evidence. And then her body was placed onto a bed sheet. And then it was taken on to the morgue.
NANCY GRACE: Detectives attend the autopsy, which is conducted at 6 o'clock the same evening.
TARA KELLY: The victim had reddish brown hair. She was about 5 foot 6, and she had an identifiable tattoo
on her arm. She had numerous fractures to her skull that were overlapping. And whatever she had been hit with,
it had been a rounded object. BRYAN POLCYN: It was a bludgeoning with what kind of tool-- police either
didn't know or wouldn't say. It was some sort of a metal object. Could have been a tire iron.
Could have been something else, but it was-- it was a metal object. TARA KELLY: She had severe bruising on her chest
that was below her collarbone and consistent with a footprint, suggesting someone had stood on her.
JAMES JOHNSON: The cause of death for autopsy was blunt trauma. But there was also petechiae, which
would be indicative of manual strangulation. She had been sexually assaulted, raped, strangled.
She had been bludgeoned to death. NANCY GRACE: Investigators do not have long to wait
before the victims identified. The murder is covered on the local news. JEFF TAYLOR: Her parents did not report
her missing to the police. She kind of had a lifestyle which she would come and go freely from-- from home.
BRYAN POLCYN: Her half sister said she learned about it on the news. They saw a breaking-news cut in to "The Muppet
Movie" that was on television and heard that this body had been found. And she said her mother immediately said, that's Traci.
TARA KELLY: Judy Luebka phoned the police and said that her daughter had not come home.
And she had heard on the news that a girl had been found. Said that her daughter had red dyed hair and a heart tattoo
with a blue arrow through it and that she also had a ring on her that had been given to her by her boyfriend.
She said her daughter was Traci Hammerberg and she was 18 years old. So officers immediately knew that this was the victim
who had been discovered. NANCY GRACE: So who is Traci Hammerberg, and why would anyone want to kill her?
It appears that Traci was no stranger to risk in her life. BRYAN POLCYN: She certainly didn't seem afraid to hang out
with people who are dangerous and associated with people who are known to law enforcement and maybe had
had some issues of their own, whether it was as juveniles or as young adults. They got in trouble themselves.
They have their own issues. So the focus I think originally was with them. How She ended up in the driveway she
did was the 35-year mystery. Years will go by. Detectives will change. The case will go cold.
It is sad that time heals all wounds. But when it comes to science, time can be an ally, the time needed for new forensic science
to finally bring closure to a decades old murder. In December 1984, the body of a young woman
is found by a resident of Ozaukee County, Wisconsin. She's been beaten to death following
a violent sexual assault. The victim is identified as 18-year-old Traci Hammerberg.
Traci was a high school student who was friendly, well-liked, popular, seemed to have
a lot of circles of friends. Traci lives at home with her younger half sister, and
her mother, and her stepfather. She had a harder life than most for her age. But she liked the-- the same things a lot of us liked.
She liked to go out and be with her friends and party and have a good time. And I think she was just a typical 18-year-old girl.
JAMES JOHNSON: She liked to have fun, she drank, and she smoked some marijuana, which was probably
quite common to the group of-- of people that she had associated with. NANCY GRACE: Traci's already known to police.
TARA KELLY: Traci had a history of being a runaway. And she had been in and out of the house for some time.
Traci had told friends that she had had a problem with her stepfather and that he had been making unwanted advances towards her.
And this explained why she was running away from home so often. She had some difficulties when she was younger.
She had finally gone on to the right path. She was going to move out of state and move
with her boyfriend in North Dakota. But that was stopped by her killer. NANCY GRACE: It's unclear to investigators
if Traci was killed where her body was found or whether the body had been placed there.
But given the location, it's likely the killer knows the area. FREDERICK MEULLER: The place where she was found
has not really known by too many people. That road is very isolated, you know. And especially the driveway is even more isolated.
NANCY GRACE: As investigators gather more information, they began to piece together Traci's movements in the hours
before her death. TARA KELLY: On Friday, December 14, Traci had been babysitting for a woman called Helen Michaels
from about 7:20 to 9:45 PM. Traci had left the house. But before she did, she had a conversation with Helen,
and she agreed to come back and babysit the next morning at 7:30. NANCY GRACE: After babysitting, Traci
meets some of her friends. They go to a house on Garfield Road in the nearby town
of Port Washington. JAMES JOHNSON: There, they played a drinking game called quarters and sort of hung out
and smoked a little marijuana. TARA KELLY: Her friends then said, hey, why don't I give you a lift?
But she declined. And instead, she left about 12:30 on foot. NANCY GRACE: Detectives are unclear about what
happens next. BRYAN POLCYN: One of the biggest mysteries was, what happened when she left the house?
Did she get a ride? Did she go this way? Did she go that way? There were a number of different stories
that police were getting from the people at that party. The most reliable account they had
was that Traci had walked home, or at least began to walk home from Port Washington to Saukville.
If you look at the pictures from the crime scene, there's snow on the ground. It's December.
It's cold. On a four-mile walk in the snow, it wouldn't have been unusual for Traci to have hitched a ride.
JAMES JOHNSON: It was common for many people to hitchhike. My theory was that someone picked
Traci up, took her to go party, maybe drink some more beer. And made advances towards her.
She denied those advances. And then, the person killed her. NANCY GRACE: From witness accounts and interviews,
police now begin to collate a list of suspects. TARA KELLY: Through speaking to friends and family,
police figured out that Traci smoked menthol cigarettes. So the cigarettes that were found at the crime scene
had likely belonged to the killer. SCOTT HELLER: There was a great focus on the party, the house
that she was last seen. But after those people were eliminated, you just had to widen the circle.
You know, who did she know? Who hung out with her? Who else might she have encountered that--
that morning when she left? She seemed to be the kind of person that gave investigators
a rich list of potential suspects, because of the people she associated with. NANCY GRACE: The circle of Traci's associates
is very wide. SCOTT HELLER: She moved freely in all those groups. She was able to move about.
And that caused problems really for the investigation, because it wasn't just one group we could focus on.
We had to-- we had to focus on numerous groups. JAMES JOHNSON: We took a look at different circles of friends
that Traci had, people she went to school with, people she hung out with, people in her neighborhood,
people that are associated with other family members, other friends. We knew what had to be somebody that knew Traci.
And somebody had to be familiar with the area where she was killed. Investigators pursued hundreds of suspects and witnesses.
They looked at every different type of tip and lead. They used lots of different theories
and different techniques to try and figure out who might have done this. But they were never successful.
NANCY GRACE: Detectives are extremely concerned. Murders are incredibly rare in Ozaukee County.
BRYAN POLCYN: In 1984, violent crime like this was virtually unheard of in Port Washington.
This wasn't just a murder. This was a high school student. And so it was the buzz of the community.
JAMES JOHNSON: Any time there's a homicide of a young girl and the killer is not known, there always
is that apprehension in the community that the killer may strike again. NANCY GRACE: Then, horror does strike again.
Another young woman, a friend of Traci's is discovered murdered. TARA KELLY: In July 1985, just six months after Traci had been
brutally killed, a friend of hers, 18-year-old Wendy Smith, had been found beaten, raped, and murdered.
She had been with friends, left their house, and was going to meet her mother who worked at a tavern.
However, she never turned up. And 24 hours later, they found her body on top of a hillside.
BRYAN POLCYN: Certainly for young women in the community, It was terrifying. Two young women had died.
Was there a serial killer? They didn't know. And I think a lot of people were concerned who might be next.
Just not knowing what-- what happened or who did that, who would do that, there was fear.
There was concern. That's what would have made this all the more shocking. In close-knit, small communities, this kind of thing
doesn't happen. The Ozaukee Sheriff's department and the Port Washington police, where Wendy's body was found
started working together. They thought maybe there might be some links to these two murders.
They shared acquaintances and friends, so obviously, police were thinking maybe it was someone who both of the girls had known.
NANCY GRACE: Detectives try to develop a lead on a suspect using the assistance of the FBI.
JAMES JOHNSON: There was an FBI profile made on the likely suspect. Part of the profile would-- would show that Traci most
likely knew who her killer was. There were looking for a loner, someone who operated
on the fringes of groups of friends who didn't have close friends, someone who was prone to violence.
Somebody who had been involved in crimes, but not to the extent where they would appear on our radar.
TARA KELLY: Investigators were able to determine that forensics did not match from the two different crimes.
And they were able to show that these had been committed by two separate people.
NANCY GRACE: Detectives send evidence collected from autopsy for testing. And from the analysis are able to eliminate suspects.
TARA KELLY: The laboratory examined the vaginal swabs from the autopsy. And they discovered that semen was present.
Further analysis was done. And they found that the individual had O blood type and two identifiable enzymes,
one of which is only found in 3% of the US population. NANCY GRACE: By today's standards,
this is fairly primitive information. BRYAN POLCYN: 1984, you didn't have the kind of DNA-matching technology we have now.
They were able to test blood type. And that blood analysis could eliminate about 98%
of the population. Old boyfriends, friends that people gave us tips on-- we would ask them to volunteer for a blood sample.
And then, that blood was transferred over to the state crime lab for analysis. Sometimes, it would take weeks.
There was also a back up at the crime lab. And sometimes, a month to get results back.
They had a lot of possible suspects. But one by one, blood typing alone was able to eliminate most of them.
We never had a match. And we did a lot of people. I-- I lost count. NANCY GRACE: Even though investigators
exhaust every possibility, the killer continues to evade detection. And the case eventually goes cold.
I know it was on the minds of people in Port Washington and never left their minds.
People have always wanted to know, are we ever going to find out who killed Traci?
We were invested in this case from day one. And we're not going to let it go sit on a shelf somewhere.
We were going to continue to work this case until we solved it, or until there was
no other rocks to turn over. And as we'll see next, the bloodline detectives will use every new forensic weapon they can,
weapons that didn't exist to police who were first confronted with Traci Hammerberg's bloody murder.
For three decades, Ozaukee County, Wisconsin police investigate the murder of 18-year-old Traci
Hammerberg. Her body found beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled in December 1984.
The case runs up against a brick wall and goes cold. But detectives are not willing to let go.
TARA KELLY: All the police officer who worked on this were really trying to solve this case.
I mean, this was a woman who had been brutally murdered. And they wanted to bring her killer to justice.
BRYAN POLCYN: The term "cold case" suggests it sat in a file somewhere and no one was working it,
and they got a break years later or a tip. But if you look at the file, you see that over the years,
they continued to work this methodically year after year after year, even through changes in personnel, people who
retired, new people came in. It's remarkable the consistency they showed after all these years.
NANCY GRACE: Investigators are also determined to keep the case in the public mind.
BRYAN POLCYN: About 10 years ago, I got a phone call from Jeff Taylor at the Ozaukee County Sheriff's Office who
said, we've got this cold case. And we'd really like to get some attention. Would you be willing to do a story on this case
and help us maybe generate some leads? They opened up the metal cabinets, pulled out the case files, set them down and said, have at it.
JAMES JOHNSON: Reading through the file is almost like a novel that as you read it, you're like well, here's a suspect.
They have the murderer. Why am I still reading this? Why isn't it solved? But then, the person is cleared through forensics.
SCOTT HELLER: The volumes of people they talk to, any little bit of information they followed up on,
it was evident throughout that case file. And it was emotional roller coaster, even 20-- over
20 years after the homicide. We put together a story and hoped maybe that would lead to someone coming
forward with information that would finally solve this cold case. And you know, for another 9, 10 years, crickets.
We didn't hear anything. NANCY GRACE: Between Traci's murder in 1984 and the early 1990s, forensic techniques
come a long way. DNA profiling is revolutionizing crime fighting. And the National Database, CODIS, is expanding.
TARA KELLY: In 1995, the state crime laboratory was able to create the first DNA profile.
And that profile was uploaded onto CODIS. Unfortunately, there were no matches. We just continue to do our samples--
to take our samples and whatever the newest evolution of DNA was, that's how we compared it.
BRYAN POLCYN: They always wanted to have one DNA sample that they knew was off to the crime lab
so that there was always that possibility they were going to get a match. So they'd go out and interview more people
and get more samples just keep this case alive. And I think for nearly 35 years, they did.
Each time we spoke with suspects or people that knew Traci, we'd ask for additional names,
for other people that we could talk to that maybe knew Traci and maybe were on the fringes of these-- of these other friends.
The state crime lab ran CODIS monthly for our case. We knew if we got the DNA from the suspect
we would know who killed Traci. Because part of the evidence that-- that we didn't tell
the general public was that in addition to the DNA from the semen that was found inside Traci's body,
we also had the same DNA profile underneath Traci's fingernails. So it was evident to us that whoever raped Traci also killed
Traci and that Traci had tried to defend herself by scratching her assailant. BRYAN POLCYN: More than 400 samples
were tested, the most of any cold case in Wisconsin history, which I think demonstrates the commitment to the case.
But as they kept striking out, you'd think at a certain point, are they gonna run out of people?
And it wasn't until this whole new technique came along that they got the big break in the case.
NANCY GRACE: Over 2,000 miles away in California, police announced their success in tracking down
a notorious serial killer and rapist. TARA KELLY: April 2018, police in California
held a news conference where they announced that they had apprehended the Golden State Killer.
This was a man who committed over 50 rapes and at least 13 murders between 1974 and 1986.
He had been tracked down by a new technique called forensic genealogy. And the Ozaukee Police Department
thought maybe this was a technique they could apply to Traci Hammerberg's murder.
There were actually a couple of us at the department who had recently done our own genealogy
and thought if we could upload some of the DNA of our suspect into a genealogy tree, this would be fantastic.
JAMES JOHNSON: One of our investigators was able to reach out to the FBI Forensic
Genetic Genealogy team. We had conference calls with them and updates several times a day.
It was-- I was impressed about their willingness to work with our team. What we know of as DNA analysis
has often relied on the comparison between evidence and a database of criminals and their DNA profiles.
This is now taking that genealogy DNA, the 23andMe, the ancestry.com, those consumer kits that are out there
and comparing the evidence to that. So it's a much wider field, and it's a whole field of people
who might never have had any other sort of law enforcement contact that would have required them to submit
DNA to a criminal database. So it's like saying if you strike out over here, we've got a whole new field of opportunity
for you to find a suspect in there, or at least someone who might help lead us to a suspect.
Because it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to find the criminal in that public data.
But you might find a relative, and a relative close enough that we can start to do traditional genealogy research
and work our way down the family tree until we get to the suspect. For the bloodline detectives, could this incredible
new crime-solving tool finally identify Traci Hammerberg's killer? We'll find out next.
By early 2019, the bloodline detectives of the Ozaukee County Police Department are confident genetic genealogy can help them solve the 1984
murder of Traci Hammerberg. Their only concern is that they may not have enough DNA
to obtain a viable sample. BRYAN POLCYN: One of the first things they had to do--
and this is the key to this kind of research-- is they had to go and find out if they still had raw DNA
evidence, because whatever is in the CODIS database is not in the right format that can be compared
to the open-source public DNA that we all might upload from our family research.
So it's like apples and oranges. So they needed to go find the raw materials and build a geotype that could be compared to these databases.
We didn't think we had enough. We thought we could use the entire sample. We scoured our property rooms.
We looked in our refrigerators that hold our biological evidence and we were able to find some extracts from previous tests
that we're able to develop the profile through. TARA KELLY: Those swabs were then shipped to a company
in Texas called Gene by Gene. And they conducted analysis on them. On April 10, 2019 police were contacted by Gene by Gene, Ltd.
And told that they were able to create a profile based on the swabs they had been sent.
Once that was found, they were able to get that to the FBI, and it was able to get uploaded into a database
that we could work with. NANCY GRACE: Initially, the search comes up with numerous hits.
SCOTT HELLER: That profile gets submitted to the genealogy databases. From there, we get a list of people
who share DNA with our suspect. TARA KELLY: Those relatives were in the second to fourth cousin
range. So this was obviously huge, because they now had a family that they could identify.
But it still involved going through hundreds of different people to identify who the suspect was.
JEFF TAYLOR: It's like any genealogy database. They get thousands of names back with you know,
this person is a closer relative than that person. So yeah, we had a lot to look at.
From there, we just-- they told us how to build trees. We built-- we used the tools and the database.
And we did it for 10 to 12 hours a day for probably two weeks. JAMES JOHNSON: We had to build back for generations.
And then, we had to build back down to present day. And we were looking for males that
would have been between the ages of 16 and 60 in 1984. I believe in the end, we had upwards of nearly 1,000 names
that we had in our trees. NANCY GRACE: After all their hard work, investigators fear they have reached another dead end.
JEFF TAYLOR: We had actually been kind of frustrated, because we had been working
on it for quite a while. We had been building the family trees. And it just did not seem like we were getting any closer.
And one of the FBI agents actually kind of took a second look and said, you know what.
I think we're missing something. And went back and identified another potential tree that we
started to build off of. And we were able to develop our suspect based on that. We're looking for someone--
someone that had ties to our community. We started working in March of 2019. And finally came to two brothers that were from the area
in September of 2019. NANCY GRACE: Almost 35 years after Traci Hammerberg is murdered, police finally close in on her killer.
TARA KELLY: The two brothers were identified as Eugene and Philip Cross. The Cross brothers had lived in the area of Port Washington
and Saukville in the '80s. NANCY GRACE: One of the Cross brothers is alive. The other dead.
To detectives, Philip Cross appears to be the most likely suspect. BRYAN POLCYN: Philip Cross was a loner.
He didn't have a lot of friends. And for all the suspects they had, Philip Cross was never on their radar.
Once we looked at his criminal history for our department, we said, you know, this is our guy.
It has to be our guy. Then we found out that he was-- he died of an overdose in 2012.
TARA KELLY: On August 21, 2012 Philip died of a drug overdose at the Diamond Inn in Milwaukee.
And because of that, there was an autopsy available. And that meant there was DNA from the /
I went down to the medical examiner's office, collected that card, and took it to the state crime lab, who
confirmed that that was the same DNA from the semen in Traci and the DNA taken from beneath her fingernails.
NANCY GRACE: Police now know for sure they've identified the killer. But why did he do it?
And how did he come to attack and murder Traci? JAMES JOHNSON: Philip Cross was a young man that had
a lot of trouble in his past. He was a good looking fellow, but he was a loner. He had a violent temper.
When things didn't go his way, he acted out violently. He was kind of the outcast that didn't seem that he really
along to any one social group. A lot of people knew of him. Not many would call him a friend.
Police learnt from talking to different witnesses that Cross had smoked Marlboro Reds, which of course,
tied in with the crime scene. Philip Cross had attended Port Washington High School.
He was a few years older than Traci. We found out that he did ride the same bus to middle school
with-- with Traci. NANCY GRACE: Police also discover Cross had numerous interactions with law enforcement.
TARA KELLY: Philip had quite a reputation from a young age. He was incarcerated a number of times.
He had stolen cars. He had called the bomb threat to his school. He was done for drugs.
He was convicted of a forgery charge and sent to prison in 1983 and was released from prison in 1984.
And came back to the community. At the time of the homicide, he was working at a factory.
He had a very volatile temper. His colleagues said, if things didn't go his way he would very much lash out.
So this was someone you didn't really want to cross. If his sexual advances were spurned,
he's the kind of guy who would have turned violent. At sometime after the murder of Traci Hammerberg,
there was a female who had told Sheboygan Police Department that he had been in a car with her.
And when she spurned his advances, he put a belt around her neck and attempted to strangle her.
JAMES JOHNSON: He said that if it wasn't for her getting away, she's sure that he would have killed her.
Police interviewed him about that. And he gave a different account and nothing came of it.
But there was sort of a signal out there that this is a guy who is prone to be violent with women.
It really struck me in doing the story that there were all these times that he was in custody after 1984,
and no one knew they had Traci Hammerberg's killer. They couldn't have known, because the crimes he committed
didn't require the submission of DNA. If they had, then, this would have been solved a long time ago.
NANCY GRACE: Finally, after 3 and 1/2 decades, the bloodline detectives are able to piece together
the events of the night Traci was murdered and catch her killer. It's 2019. Police in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin investigating
the 1984 rape and murder of 18-year-old Traci Hammerberg have identified her killer, Philip Cross using
revolutionary DNA techniques. It took 35 years, but investigators could finally understand how that fateful night played out.
JAMES JOHNSON: It was totally senseless. It was a crime of opportunity. He found Traci.
She was vulnerable. TARA KELLY: At the time when Cross had finished work, that would have been the same time that Traci was walking
home from the party that she had just been with with her friends. Traci would have accepted a lift from him,
because she knew him at school. And she knew him through her brother. So at that point, they may have wanted to have another drink
or take some more drugs. So she may have guided him to the [INAUDIBLE] driveway,
because she knew that location. It sounds like an absolutely brutal murder. Terrifying, first of all.
Who knows what it's like the moment you recognize that the person you're with, maybe you're
partying together, maybe you just think it's the guy giving you a lift-- he suddenly turns.
He's making sexual advances. You're trying to stop him. He's becoming violent. You're being sexually assaulted and violated
in a way you never imagined. Police believed that Cross had probably made sexual advances towards Traci.
And when she rejected him, he lost control. I think just the fact that he couldn't
get his way with something-- I don't think he could control himself. I think the violence was his way of coping.
FREDERICK MEULLER: One thing led to another, you know? And he probably got to a point of no return.
NANCY GRACE: It appears Traci had put up a tremendous struggle. SCOTT HELLER: DNA was recovered from
underneath her fingernails, indicating absolutely she fought back. She was fighting for her life.
JAMES JOHNSON: I believe she was strangled first, raped, and then bludgeoned to death.
It disgusted me that someone would treat another human being like this and a young girl.
And that they had got away without being caught for so long. NANCY GRACE: The fact that the Traci
Hammerberg case was brought to a conclusion is a story in itself. TARA KELLY: After three decades, police had
finally identified the killer. It was incredible. Everyone probably thought this case
was never going to be solved. When we did the story 10 years ago, I thought we were going to get a resolution.
I thought, you know what, someone's going to see this, they're going to get the lead they need,
they're going to get the match they need. And year after year went by and nothing happened.
And I started to believe, we're never going to know who killed Traci. So for this to finally be solved, it's a big deal.
NANCY GRACE: For the family of Philip Cross, there is also closure. But they must now live with the knowledge their relative took
the life of an innocent teen. SCOTT HELLER: They didn't do this, so I try and afford them the same respect that you know,
we did for Traci's family. I do think you know, they're caught in a situation that is hard-- going to be hard for them
as well. JAMES JOHNSON: I had mixed emotions. It was great that we found out who it was.
But I really wanted Philip Cross to be alive. I wanted him to face us, face Traci's family,
face the community for what he did. He stole Traci's life. He had the ability to live his own life however he wanted.
Traci didn't get that. He took that from her. I think all law enforcement officers take cases home.
There's those that stay with you. There's those that you want to help and make sure there's
closure for the family. And for Traci's case, there was-- we needed closure for the community.
NANCY GRACE: There are no winners in a case like this with tragedy and heartbreak at its center.
But the only positive to emerge is the overwhelming power of modern forensic technology.
JEFF TAYLOR: Well, we never would have solved the case without genealogy. And it probably kept some innocent people out of jail.
This case had so many people that were looked at so hard. And we were so sure that they were our-- our guy.
And had it not been for the science, we probably would have pursued a conviction
on some of these people that didn't have anything to do with it. JAMES JOHNSON: By the time we solved the case in 2019,
over 400 men had been eliminated from the case. Philip Cross's name wasn't in our case file.
He wasn't associated with this homicide at all. I think from television shows, we've always
been led to believe that murder always leaves a trace, that it's like the CSI effect.
Every murder can be solved with a little piece of hair or a fabric of carpet. And I didn't always believe that was true.
But this changes the game, because there's certainly the potential to solve almost any crime,
it would seem. NANCY GRACE: Alongside that technology and of equal importance is the dogged work
and the commitment of investigators, the bloodline detectives. BRYAN POLCYN: I admire how persistent they were.
I think it's hard not to have admiration for the kind of consistency they showed over the years.
Because again, this wasn't a case that was just shoved in a drawer. They kept it alive.
SCOTT HELLER: It was inspiring to see how as a team, law enforcement really can make a difference.
I mean, this was a team effort all around. So it kind of gives you hope. It shows the community that we're not gonna give up.
We have a task. And we're gonna find who killed Traci. We didn't stray from that.
And we saw it to its end, its rightful end. Blood in the snow, no murder weapon, and a case
that had been running cold for almost 35 long years. But would you ever give up on your loved one?
Traci Hammerberg fought, scratching, screaming, and kicking until the very end. And thanks to investigators persistence and the emergence
of genetic genealogy, police were finally able to identify her killer, Philip Cross.
Traci Hammerberg may have died 1984. But it was thanks to forensic genealogy that her case was finally closed,
one more triumph for science and for the bloodline detectives. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Brief Summary

Forensic genealogy solves the 1984 murder of Traci Hammerberg, identifying Philip Cross as her killer after 35 years of investigation.

Key points

Community Shock and Fear. Traci's murder sends shockwaves through Ozaukee County, raising fears of a serial killer.
Cold Case Investigation. Despite years of investigation, Traci's murder remains unsolved, haunting the community.
The Murder of Traci Hammerberg. In December 1984, the body of 18-year-old Traci Hammerberg is found, brutally murdered.
Closure After Decades. After 35 years, police finally identify Traci Hammerberg's killer using genetic genealogy.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Her murder sends shockwaves throughout the county.

Nancy Grace describes the impact of the murder on the community.

1:37WatchApr 1, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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