Bloodline Detectives - Season 2, Episode 17 - Justice for Leslie - Full Episode | Forensic Files

in 1976 orange county california a young woman found dead just outside a military
base they discovered her body laid out like she had been dragged out of a car she
was nude there was no reason she would even gone out to that area so they could only
assume that she somebody picked her up there is no clear suspect the case goes cold
they had nothing to go on fingerprints didn't help them this case went cold but police begin to utilize a
revolutionary new form of investigative science genetic genealogy in this case was huge
it solved the case i mean you can't see anything more definitive than that i mean no one suspected this
guy he wasn't on anyone's radar this is the story of leslie penrod harris and how an investigation that
goes cold for 40 years finally heats up and is solved thanks to forensic genealogy i'm nancy grace this is
bloodline detectives [Music] [Applause] [Music] orange county california located between
l.a and san diego it's a very popular tourist stop the home of disneyland but it's also home to people of very diverse
backgrounds a lot of people's perception of orange county is disneyland and the beaches and the great weather
which we all have but orange county is much more than disneyland i would say we have a
large variety of people that live in orange county i would say for the most part you know
they're working professionals probably upper blue-collar professional type individuals
orange county was a very unique cosmopolitan center in santa ana and in newport beach but the rest of the
county was farmers and farmland so it was farmer it was cow man and it was cosmopolitan it was a mix of
people americana at its very best on may 17 1976 costa mesa police are contacted by john harris he says his
wife leslie penrod harris is missing leslie was married to john harris leslie was 29 years old at the time i
believe john was 32 or 33. for the last several years prior to 76 they had been living in
honolulu hawaii and because of various problems a job transfer the harris has moved from hawaii and
we're going to relocate here in southern california and apparently according to mr harris a brunt of the problems in
their marriage recently had been arguments stemming from their move from hawaii to california
and a purchase of a condominium in the area that seemed to be some type of animosity between the two
and so it was just john and leslie staying at the at a hotel in irvine on may 17th of 1976 about
8 30 9 pm they went to a restaurant at present-day south coast plaza apparently they had an argument at some
point during their dinner and she got up and left the husband waited at the table for her and after some time
she didn't come back he asked the restaurant staff if they'd checked the bathroom for her they did she wasn't in
the bathroom they couldn't find her in the restaurant and after a couple of hours he eventually went home and then
eventually made a police report that evening to the costa mesa police department that
his wife had gone missing the search for leslie penrod harris does not last long
at 4 30 a.m the very next morning leslie's found dead near the marine corps air station at el toro
just north of san diego military police find leslie completely naked her body lying on a roadway just
outside the base perimeter they discovered her body laid out like she'd been dragged out of a car she was
nude and uh her hair appeared to be wet and she was just left on a sidewalk like
that some patrol deputies went to the scene confirmed the situation a decedent and they had called the sheriff's
homicide investigators she did have a couple minor injuries and it appeared that
she had some wounds to her ankles from her body being dragged to the location where it was finally found
the crime scene photos just show a uh the nude body of a female supine she's lying on her back
there's no there's no blood at the scene police immediately began to collect evidence as best as they could
obviously you know they're going to you know take fingerprints from any items that were you know found at the crime
scene in this case there really wasn't anything other than her body uh at that time in 1976 it was very difficult and
it might have been even non-existent to get fingerprints off of a body obviously they would have done a sexual
assault kit but they didn't have dna at that point in time the most they could do was some type of
blood analysis on the semen if the person secreted blood when she was her body was disposed of
there was no per no clothing no personal property no wallet nothing like that at
that point they were to stand still the area where she left south coast plaza to where she was found is about 20
miles away john harris had their car so she either took some sort of transportation she obviously
didn't walk it's probably too late for the bus there was no reason she would even gone
out to that area so the question was who would have picked her up and why did they kill and
take her out to the marine corps area so now they knew that they need to talk to the people at the airport or inn
where they were staying talk to the people who were at the riviera restaurant which is the last place that
she was seen and most of all talk to the husband when a spouse especially a wife goes
missing police immediately focus on the husband as the very first person of interest
detectives hone in on john harris in this case they had no other suspects the police are obviously going to
interrogate the husband and make sure his statements make sense make sure they're
consistent in particular i think he admitted that they had an argument at the restaurant uh and you know that would be
one of the first clues that maybe something wasn't right in their relationship and you know did he follow up and find
her back at you know their house and do something to her i mean that would have been the thought process i would guess
that the detectives had gone through and then she dumps her body you know far away from you know the crime scene
they interviewed the waiter and he confirmed the story that john harris said that you know they had
an argument she left he checked the bathroom saw a taxi cab leave thought maybe she
might have been on that he couldn't really tell none of the adjacent businesses could
say that she was in there and they looked around the parking lot they ended up checking with the cab company and
there was no record of anyone picking her up at that time it was just he and leslie at a table
some type of argument they could tell there was a little bit of tension at the table leslie leaves
never comes back everybody's stories match to what john harris is the report john made with costa mesa police
department match his story and the waiter story so his alibi was essentially clean as far as he didn't
leave with leslie she never came back leslie was found 15 miles away at el toro air station
there was no time in any of this timeline for john to have gone anywhere near el toro air station and
come back his whereabouts were accounted for the police were really at a dead end
investigators hope leslie's autopsy will reveal new clues they found a ligature on one of her legs
ligature mark indicating that maybe her legs have been tied together at one point but there was no rope or anything
found at the scene and then she had some bruising on the right side of her body uh indicating some sort of trauma
and then they recovered they did vaginal swabs pretty routine in an autopsy and they
discovered the seam and they preserved it but at the time they they didn't have any the forensic
scientology back then was just not to the level it is now so but luckily they preserved it
today law enforcement we're very spoiled we have cell phones laptops ring cameras surveillance cameras
everywhere license plate readers dna is huge back then they had a witness and or a fingerprint
but kudos to all the staff and all the crime lab folks who worked on this case back in
the day because they had the wherewithal to collect swabs from leslie at the autopsy in 1976.
el toro is a huge military facility and since leslie penrod harris is found so close to it police naturally suspect a
u.s marine could be involved for someone to get onto el toro marine air station they had to have either a pass there had
to be an employee or they had to have peculiar knowledge of how to sneak onto the base with someone not seeing them in
other words somebody who was very familiar with the surrounding areas this individual
that murdered her was probably a marine a woman savagely murdered near a military base 15 miles from her own home
her husband seems to have an alibi so detectives begin to look more closely at just who was leslie penrod harris
that's next on bloodline detectives [Music] may 1976 orange county california police
investigating the murder of leslie penrod harris her body found completely naked on a roadway near the el toro
marine corps air station now police want to know more about leslie she was a recent
orange county resident having moved with her husband from hawaii and she'd been here in
orange county for just a couple of weeks i think and she had been living at a hotel
with her husband in orange county she was a girl who was looking for a new beginning a new future
a new area in orange county which really it was boomtown orange county in 1976 was a
boom town she was coming to the mecca where you could make a good living and that's what she wanted and that's
the kind of gal she was very easy going her friend said she was very admirable a great friend
wouldn't hurt anybody was married living in hawaii had a job moved back and was going to start a new life on the west
coast her and her husband put a deposit on a condominium and then lake el toro lake forest to now begin the second
chapter of their life apparently leslie wanted to buy a home either a home or condominium here
in southern california and john was a little reluctant about wanting to spend money on a property so
an argument ensued i think she just wasn't happy in her marriage either and she didn't want to
leave hawaii which can't blame her come back here you know she's just typical 30 year old woman she just wants
to live her nice life and i think that she wasn't getting along with her husband and uh
and one thing led to another and unfortunately you don't think back then a woman would
be uh at risk just leaving a restaurant but uh things happened even back then police still don't have much evidence to
go on they make sure all the obvious bases in their investigation are covered the police did their job when this
murder investigation first started they interviewed all the witnesses who they were supposed to they checked blood
types to see whether or not john was involved it didn't look like john was involved
i know they thought that the husband was the suspect they interviewed him several
times his story was consistent i know they suspected him but at some point they actually had nowhere else to go i mean
they just exhausted all evidence leads at that point now police begin to focus on the
el toro marine air station for any possible leads the majority of where my victim's body was found
near el toro marine base is very desolate the only thing out there literally was the marine base
itself there was no public housing the huge puzzle was how did leslie get from the parking lot of south coast plaza
to where she was eventually discovered behind the marine base again middle of the night she was found about 4 20 a.m
literally five hours later she's now dead totally nude strangled and dumped on a roadway behind
a marine base so again the focus was on why was she left where she was somebody probably had something to do
with the marine corps we know today and particularly at the fbi and from the fbi's behavioral analysis unit we
know that killers generally dump their bodies leave their bodies at areas that they're familiar with
particularly when it's one of their first crimes so we always look for that you know me being a former marine myself
given the location of where leslie's body was found it had to have been somebody that was familiar with that
installation and the areas in and out of that base whether he was working there visiting that area or living in that
location so our thoughts were marine with some type of costa mesa california connections
needs of leslie penrod harris's death rattles the whole community back in the 70s you had
unfortunately a lot of serial killers going around you had william bonin you had randy craft
and one of the methods of transportation back in the day was hitchhiking you saw
a lot of people with their thumbs out sitting on the side of the roadway hitchhiking
and so you were taking a big chance that the truck the van especially a van the car you were getting into was this
a friend a foe or potentially going to be harmful to me so i'm sure back in the day when you
have a girl that left south coast plaza a very affluent shopping mall and then is found naked and deceased
behind the marine base i'm sure there were some shock waves going around in the community
finally police exhaust all leads leslie's case goes cold they had nothing to go on fingerprints
didn't help them this case went cold until 1998. orange county crime lab criminalist
reopened the case she re re-examined the swabs from the autopsy and she was able to find semen
and was able to extract some now possible human dna so because of that they believed they could create a dna
profile which they in fact were able to it's now 23 years later now with the advent of dna there were so
many cases where all that you could do was try to match the old rape kit with a new dna profile and the police set out
to do that and they submitted that into the law enforcement databases that existed back
in the day to see if there was any hits and there wasn't we were at a loss of what to do
so the case went cold again the investigation into the murder of a beautiful young woman leslie penrod
harris seemingly advances in 20-year cycles 20 years after leslie's naked body is
discovered detectives try to reopen a cold file but as we see next on bloodline detectives it will take
another 20 years and some amazing science for a real break to come their way [Music]
1998 orange county california the orange county sheriff's cold case team reopens
the investigation into the brutal murder of leslie penrod harris they decide to visit her husband john
and ask for a dna sample it was brand new detectives who were on the case in 1998
but just like the old detectives the husband is always the prime suspect you always round up the usual suspects it's
been that way since the start of criminal investigation they wanted to know is it the husband's
dna which is prime piece of evidence in this case we knocked on his door we had no prior contact with him just
knocked on his door identified ourselves and asked him for a voluntary swab and uh he was uh
very reluctant i mean he was uncooperative he told us to go away and he just wanted to move on with his
life and forget it he said it happened a long time ago and he refused you would think after being contacted
all these years so you're looking at 12 years later sheriff's detectives contact you saying
they're still working on your wife's mother you would think you would be absolutely thrilled that your wife's
case just wasn't collecting dust on a shelf it was almost the opposite it had been 23 years since leslie had
disappeared and now they're coming after him i think anyone would be frightened john
was frightened leslie's disappearance had destroyed him mentally had destroyed him in in his
foundation of his life he was not in a good place and to revisit it 23 years later just brought
all the worst memories he said no we told him we're going to get a search warrant come back we're not going away
but he still refused and we just thought it was odd and to me it just indicated that he might be
good for this crime anyway we went back a few weeks later with a search warrant and he was the
same way he was uncooperative but he complied with the the search warrant we got an oral swab
and then i photo to maria glonsky our forensic scientist and she did her magic where she breaks
it down compares it and a couple weeks later she called us back and said it wasn't him and we were shocked because
we thought this is going to be the guy and the way he acted but he wasn't a match for the semen and recovered from
his uh murdered wife in 2018 the orange county sheriff's cold case team decides to try genetic genealogy
after they learn how it played a major role in catching the notorious golden state killer
in 2018 once the arrest was made of joseph deangelo for the golden state killer case a couple of the fbi uh personnel
that were directly involved in solving that steve bush and steve kramer gave a presentation at the sheriff's
department for any interested parties that wanted to hear about how this was solved and this forensic
genealogy that was used so i followed up on that and asked to meet with him and one of the cases i presented was the
leslie harris case to see can we use the dna i had upload it in the genealogy databases to
see if we can get some type of person of interest so dan came over to the fbi office in
orange county and sat down with myself and steve bush and our team dan salcedo came in with a tiny little folder and he
said this is the case file the case file on the leslie penrod harris case was roughly a quarter of an inch thick there
was just nothing to go off of now for us it doesn't really matter because the suspect's dna is the investigative tool
that we're going to use that's the lead that we're going to follow up on and in this case we were lucky enough to have
the suspect's dna forensic genealogy doesn't work if you don't have the suspect's dna you have to have the
suspect's dna genetic genealogy is amazing it is an incredible forensic tool that
allows investigators to build a genealogical profile so homicide investigators with the help of the fbi
can identify a subject they first said you have to make sure there's enough dna that's been preserved to
upload into the genealogy databases i confirmed with my crime lab that there was
and we took the next step now we sent it out to this company and they create a dna
profile to be submitted for ancestry that was accomplished in early of 2019 and off we went and we now i now work
with the fbi genealogy genetic team to start building a a tree based on my suspect dna
to see if we can now go back go way back in time to see if we can start building a tree
based on that dna sample that was uploaded one of the unique things about genetic
genealogy it can also give you your ancestry and ethnicity and first thing we determined once we got the dna
back is that our suspect had african ancestry so he was likely an african-american and when we looked at
the matches that seemed to make sense because they started coming back to african-american families in particular
uh into the southern southeastern united states uh louisiana alabama area so uh we started focusing on those particular
families we were very confident that he he was in the military again from the location of where the body was
found so we started focusing on anybody in the family that had military backgrounds and
once we identified some of the relatives in the particular case that had military backgrounds being with
the fbi uh we have unique access with the military we can make requests uh to the military to get military records and
so we were able to obtain military records from several relatives that had been in
the military including the marines in this particular case and then when you get the military records again it's
stacks of documents that you have to go through fortunately the military records like a
lot of government background checks you have to identify relatives in this particular case
we had a fbi special agent who was new to our team but she was fantastic and we started handing out different
military records to people to go through and i remember she took home uh over the easter holiday she
took home a stack of military records and uh i think it was easter sunday about 1
am she was going through some of the military records on one of the individuals and discovered a
relative that had worked at el toro in 1976 and the next day i remember she called us
all excited about it and it was it was a phenomenal find you know there was literally the needle in the haystack in
this pile of documents she found the name of an individual a relative who did not have on our
family tree yet who was in the military stationed at el toro at the same time was a crime the name of the individual
was eddie lee anderson uh and he was a marine stationed at el toro in 1976 and when we did a little bit
further background on him and pulled his records from the military we found out that he lived in costa mesa
less than a mile from where leslie harris had been abducted after 40 long years police finally have a suspect
and a name to go with it eddie lee anderson but now they've got to find him that's next on bloodline
[Music] detectives orange county california 2019 the sheriff's department cold case team
identifies the man suspected of the murder of a beautiful young woman leslie penrod harris
his name eddie lee anderson at the time of the murder anderson was a soldier at the el
toro marine air base where leslie's naked body was discovered what immediately stood out was
he was a marine stationed at el toro which fit the suspicions that we had that it
had to be somebody familiar with the area or associated with the military the other thing that was
telling in this case is that mr anderson lived relatively close to the south coast plaza where leslie was last seen
so he was definitely a person of interest in this case and some of those initial
jigsaw puzzle pieces were fitting into place based on eddie lee anderson's proximity to orange
county he actually lived here 76 and was a marine and was an african-american when i got that phone call i extremely
excited to get that news from the fbi and they said okay what we do next is you start working on that name
background it's now my job from that point on to put the case together so that's what i
started with police continue to investigate eddie lee anderson's background he's now living in louisiana river ridge
louisiana he's now buried remarried he had been married twice before a couple kids
get hold of the law enforcement officials out in that part of louisiana they are extremely helpful to me they
confirm that eddie's still alive lives in this particular house they do surveillance
male older male black lives there they run him out no criminal record so we know at least he's not still involved
in something no dna on file so i start pulling arrest reports i find out that eddie lee's been arrested a
couple times 1974 for a kidnapping out of a law he removed a female at knifepoint from a
laundromat in the city of tustin i'm able to get that police report i found out he actually assaulted his
then wife outside of her workplace in santa ana in 1976 september of 76 i get that report
i'm able to access military records and further confirm his age where he was stationed el toro
and the biggest break i got was based on the 1976 arrest report confirms again marine
married and i saw where he was living he put down that he was living on a street
called sunflower in costa mesa which i almost dropped to my knees because when i found that out
i knew that sunflower is the same street that is that faces south coast plaza and from where the apartment he listed
in 1976 and to where leslie went missing is about a mile away to me that was i think the
groundbreaking moment of i think we got our guy investigators must somehow acquire a dna sample from eddie
lee anderson in order to try and match it with semen found on leslie's body circumstantially everything's looking
really really good for me but i had to somehow get eddie's dna to match to the autopsy
extraction dna they could find no dna sample or match with eddie lee anderson but they had the
proximity the time the means the opportunity they didn't have a motive but they did know now where eddie lee
anderson lived and they were going to go and see if they could get one so they went to louisiana where he was a
truck driver they needed to get a dna sample surreptitiously lo and behold they looked through his
garbage and they found needles oh my goodness the man was a diabetic he was injecting himself with insulin and
in those needles there would be blood traces they took those blood traces and they
sent them to the fbi and when it came back there was a match investigators are using their very best
forensic weapon to solve a 40-year-old murder case they've got a suspect they've got a dna match
but can they catch the killer that's next on bloodline detectives [Music] 2019 river ridge louisiana detectives
all the way from california visit the home of ex-marine eddie lee anderson to interview him about a 40-year-old murder
basically said we're here from california we'd like like to talk to you about an old
case and he was cooperative he came outside and agreed to talk to us during the initial
part of the interview he was very forthcoming he was very open about his time in california his time in the
marine corps uh however when it came time to acknowledging uh how his dna came in
contact with miss harris he denied knowing her having a relationship her any sexual contact with her with the dna
evidence collected from eddie lee anderson police finally make an arrest they arrested him when he was with his
wife she had no idea that he had been involved in any kind of criminal activity eddie lee anderson seemed to be a
changed man he had found god he had married raised children he had a good job of
being a truck driver no one no one thought that he had been a criminal in his past life
i think when they came and arrested him and showed him the photo i think he knew
they got me and he was probably inside he was just you know he couldn't believe it he was
in shock but i mean he knew he was good for the crime you don't forget stuff like that
i arrest eddie lee anderson in may of uh 2019 i now start to do all my follow-up okay
i work backwards trying to find eddie lee now i'm working forward to find out everything about eddie lee after 76
so i make contact i'm able to find his first wife that he was married to for several years
so in talking to eddie's first wife she confirmed that he was physically abusive
part of that was he would choke her jokered sometime to the point of unconsciousness
and there were times after she regained the consciousness that eddie was putting her head underwater
well one of the mysteries was leslie was found completely nude it was the in may
you know there was it wasn't raining it wasn't damp there was no fog but leslie's hair seemed to be wet
so once i got that information from eddie's first wife i think i figured out why
leslie's hair was wet eddie when he after the process of either choking her or renting her unconscious
or even after he actually killed her he tried to revive her by putting her head underwater
eddie lee anderson's arrest came 43 years after the crime a lifetime he had married he had children he had a
completely different life and my goodness gracious to think that something 43 years in the
past would come back to haunt him it was shocking it was shocking not only to the perpetrator anderson but to
everyone who was involved how after all this time dang good police work that's what it was
eddie lee anderson is under arrest and now detectives want to find leslie penrod harris's only remaining relative
a daughter she gave up for adoption when leslie herself was just a teenager amazingly the discovery that leslie had
a biological daughter was only uncovered because of this investigation no one knew leslie harris had a daughter
her friends didn't know even her own husband didn't know she had a daughter come to find out during the
course of my investigation leslie gave up a child to adoption i did search for my parents
and that was when i discovered my mother had passed away she was deceased and the cause of death was listed as
strangulation i reconnected with that daughter during the course of my investigation
and one of the first phone calls i made was to leslie's daughter to say i arrested somebody for your your mom's
murder dan had emailed me two to three days prior to the arrest asking for my phone number in case there were
any new developments so i suspected that there might be something going on and i was i was in florida with visiting
my daughter and granddaughters when i received that email so i responded right away and
i just was hoping that something that i would hear from him soon and i was driving through louisiana the day that
he was arrested then i got home back here to texas and maybe an hour and a half to two hours
later i received a phone call from dan salcido telling me that they'd made an arrest
i was um i just i started crying i felt relief [Music] i i was shocked but i was happy
that they'd made an arrest in prison awaiting trial eddie lee anderson falls victim to a new virus
raging across the world it's now 2020 when he's in the orange county jail and what do we have taking place not
only in the jail but in hospitals and medical centers and everywhere throughout the country the covet
epidemic the covet pandemic the virus is rampant haley anderson was 66 years old
and he was susceptible to the covet virus and the orange county jail was a place which started to become impacted
by this he was the first inmate to have contracted the covid virus and seven days later
he was dead we had never had a preliminary hearing we didn't have a court date set
nothing had taken place since his arrest other than the extradition so um kind of bittersweet for me because
you know was justice truly served i wanted him to go to trial i wanted to be there for the
trial but um not to say at the same time i i'd hoped that he struggled to breathe the same way my
mother struggled when he was strangling her for yolanda sanders it's a bittersweet
end to a long investigation for bloodline detectives and the science of genetic genealogy
it is a remarkable end to a case that looked as if it would never be solved genetic genealogy in this case was huge
aside from the the swabs that were collected autopsy moving forward 42 years you know i wouldn't have probably got to
eddie lee anderson if it wasn't for the fbi genealogy team those people are outstanding top in
their field i couldn't give them enough kudos of what they did for this case it was very important without it
um i still i don't believe my mother's murder would have ever been solved it's almost impossible to believe the
science of genetic genealogy can reach back 40 long years to bring back answers for victims relatives even investigators
the incredible work of bloodline detectives goes on and because of that work there is finally justice
for crime victims like leslie penrod harris and her daughter i'm nancy grace thanks so much for joining us here on
bloodline detectives [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

In 1976, Leslie Penrod Harris storms out of a restaurant after an argument with her husband. She never returns. Hours later, her naked body is found near El Toro Air Base twenty miles away.

A compelling new True Crime series, hosted by preeminent legal analyst and renowned former prosecutor Nancy Grace, that explores the advanced form of familial DNA testing.

Brief Summary

Leslie Penrod Harris's 1976 murder was solved using genetic genealogy, leading to the arrest of Eddie Lee Anderson in 2019.

Key points

The Mysterious Murder of Leslie Penrod Harris. In 1976, Leslie's body was found near a military base, leading to a cold case.
The Role of Genetic Genealogy. In 2018, detectives turned to genetic genealogy to solve the cold case.
DNA Match After 40 Years. Investigators finally match DNA to a suspect in a decades-old murder case.
The Arrest of Eddie Lee Anderson. Eddie Lee Anderson is arrested after decades of living a seemingly normal life.
A Bittersweet Conclusion. Eddie Lee Anderson dies from COVID-19 before trial, leaving questions of justice.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is the story of Leslie Penrod Harris.

Introduction to the case and its significance.

1:03WatchJun 1, 2022

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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