DNA On Soda Can Solves Cold Case | Bloodline Detectives with Nancy Grace | Forensic Files

[MUSIC PLAYING] NANCY GRACE: Cherry Hills, Colorado, 1981. The body of 34-year-old Sylvia Quayle
discovered by her own father in her home. GRANT GROSGEBAUER: He opens the front door.
He sees that she is on the ground. She's naked from the waist down. Her shirt is pulled violently over her head pinning her arms.
And at that point in time, she has a cloth thrown on her face. NANCY GRACE: Once police arrived,
they discover Sylvia not only sex-assaulted but murdered, shot in the head and stabbed in the back.
The small town of Cherry Hills is reeling, shaken by the violent crime. This is the only murder that has ever
happened in this small town. It's a city that's right outside of Denver, but it's not a place where people get murdered.
NANCY GRACE: This is the story of Sylvia Quayle, and how after 40 years, groundbreaking
forensic technology finally solves the mystery of her murder. I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives."
[THEME MUSIC] Cherry Hills, Colorado, a small town about 10 miles south of Denver.
JOHN KELLNER: It's a place where you find a lot of big homes, a lot of people who are very wealthy.
And it's just not a place where you would see a lot of crime, especially back in the 1980s.
And that's why when this murder happened, when Sylvia Quayle was killed, it really shocked the community.
JO HAMIT: She was wonderful. She kind of took me under her wing. She always made sure that we confided in each other
and we were like friends. Sylvia was very loving, very caring, loved my parents.
She was close to my parents and always wanted to take care of them. That's part of the reason why she wanted
to live next door to them. So they were getting ready to retire when she was killed,
and she used to cook meals for them and that sort of thing. NANCY GRACE: August 3, 1981, just
before they go to bed, Sylvia Quayle and her sister Joe talk on the phone. It would be the last time they ever speak to each other.
She speaks to her sister that evening just before going to bed. The next morning, though, her father
comes over because typically they have coffee together every morning, and he finds her in a terrible state.
He opens the front door. He sees that she is on the ground. Her legs are spread open.
She's naked from the waist down. Her shirt is pulled violently over her head, pinning her arms.
And at that point in time, she has a cloth thrown on her face. When the dad gets there, he was obviously
embarrassed and ashamed and horrified at what he saw, and so he moved the cloth from her face
down to her vaginal area. And when the police get on scene, they're able to move the cloth back up to her face to recreate
the scene as it was. MITCH MORRISSEY: She had suffered stab wounds. She had suffered a gunshot wound.
And of course, she had been sexually assaulted so her clothing was off. They called in all their troops,
everybody they really could to help process this crime scene. They also brought in the Colorado
Bureau of Investigation, what we call CBI. Really, the forensic experts at the time.
And they were the ones that really led the charge on collecting the physical evidence at the scene.
When investigators got there, it was pretty clear what happened, that this was a murder tied
to a sexual assault. And what the rest of the house showed is that this person snuck in through a window.
It looks like he popped off a screen, pried open a window, and came through Sylvia's house.
It appears that at some point, the assailant might have even fired a shot through the window and actually struck Sylvia
Quayle in the head with what later turned out to be a 22-caliber bullet. NANCY GRACE: Cherry Hills Police began to establish a timeline
from the night before. One thing is immediately clear, Sylvia Quayle's killer made it a point to stop her from calling for help.
The telephone wires had been torn down outside. So the individual used a hose to go up along over the telephone
lines and tore them down so Sylvia would not have been able to contact anyone by phone.
NANCY GRACE: This is the first and only recorded murder in a small town of Cherry Hills.
The local police department looks to outside agencies for help. They walked around the house, and they could tell there
were some movement with Sylvia. Specifically, when they got to her bedroom, they saw a big pool of blood on top of her pillow.
And the pillow and the bed sort of backs up to a window. And they saw that that window was open about 2 to 3 inches.
And through that window, there was a small bullet hole protruding not only through the screen
but also through the curtains. They assume that's the first action that the killer took, was that he shot her in the head,
once, maybe twice. Because from there, you can see blood tracing from her bedroom,
then into the living room. Where she's ultimately found is in the living room. NANCY GRACE: Police continue to focus on the crime scene.
Investigators have theories but not much evidence to back them up. Meanwhile, Sylvia Quayle's father remains traumatized.
My mother and I just kind of watched him retreat into himself over the years. It was very hard for him.
My mother, on the other hand, she and I talked about the crime and all that. And it was therapeutic for us, but we could never
get my dad to talk about it. And as time went by and the crime was not solved, we didn't have any idea who did this,
and you couldn't help but looking at everybody you knew and wondering if they did it.
I mean, that's a terrible thing to say, but you just couldn't help wondering who did it.
NANCY GRACE: A violent killer on the loose, a small town living in fear, hard evidence, hard to come by.
Can police catch a killer before he strikes again? That's next on "Bloodline Detectives."
[AUDIO LOGO] 1981, Arapahoe County, Colorado, the mutilated body of Sylvia Quayle, aged 34, discovered by her dad
at her Cherry Hills home. Sylvia, sex-attacked, shot in the head, and stabbed in the back.
Her brutal attack has the community in shock. Especially chilling, the fact that the killer
cut the phone lines coming from Sylvia's home before he makes his escape. There was a lot of notable things that they found.
Of course, they found Sylvia's body, and they collected the carpet underneath her buttocks,
so basically the place where if there had been an assailant that had left something behind, and at the time
they're not talking about DNA but if the assailant had left something behind they might find evidence of it
on that carpet. They didn't just collect obvious items from her body. They took windows, window frames.
They went to great detail to take fingerprints, anything that could have been potential evidence.
In those days, though, they weren't looking for DNA. They were looking for different sources of serology.
So they call them robust sources, which are her bloods, or saliva, or semen. NANCY GRACE: Arapahoe County Sheriffs have very little
evidence from the crime scene. They hope the results of Sylvia Quayle's autopsy will give them a much needed break.
What they found was that she had at least one or two gunshots to the top of her head
from a smaller caliber weapon. And then she had three stab wounds in her back, but the rest of her body it was bruised all over.
It was bloody. She had some bruises around her neck. She had bruises on her elbows and her knees
and her waist and her hips. And it was clear that she had gone through hell that night.
NANCY GRACE: Sylvia Quayle's autopsy determined she actually dies from the stab wounds, not the gunshot.
The coroner also retrieves DNA. But in 1981, identifying that DNA is impossible.
In the meantime, it's back to basics for investigators. They build a list of people, mostly
men, who knew Sylvia Quayle. There weren't eyewitnesses, there weren't ear-witnesses
to what happened. So they talked with Sylvia's friends and tried to develop perhaps a motive
for someone wanting to do this. And frankly, throughout those initial years and then
in the 20 years or so until they developed a DNA profile, there were many suspects.
You always start with who you know. Generally, you work what we call inside out,
meaning those closest to someone, whether it be a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a spouse, coworkers, anyone that could
obviously have a connection. I know the original investigation they interviewed uncles of Sylvia's, family members,
associates of Sylvia's. A lot of people they track down, a lot of people they asked to do lie detector tests
across the board. Ultimately, none of those suspects really panned out though. While some of them may have had motive, none of them matched
the profile that was on the scene, none of them had the correct blood type for what
they developed in the '90s. Does she have anybody that she doesn't get along with?
Does she have any ex-boyfriends that potentially would do something like that to her?
And actually, she did have a man that she had severed a relationship with, who had been abusive to her
in the past. So that person then becomes a suspect. And you try to find out where they were at the time
that this brutal attack and homicide took place to see if they potentially could be the person
that did this to Sylvia Quayle. NANCY GRACE: Investigators are still building a suspect list
when they get surprising news, a death row inmate confesses to the murder of 34-year-old Sylvia Quayle.
Ottis Toole was a man who was sentenced to death in Texas, a man who I believe had been convicted of multiple murders
but confessed to almost 100 different murders while he was sitting in jail in Texas.
And it became a thing, really, where detectives, troopers, police from all over the country would come and talk to Toole.
And they would ask him questions about an unsolved murder and, sure enough, that man would confess to that crime,
oftentimes after seeing evidence of the crime, after being shown crime scene photos
and being told many of the aspects of the crime. Mr. Toole decided that the way to keep from being killed,
the way to keep from being sent to the penitentiary even, he stayed in this county jail
with this sheriff that would provide him with the information about different cases
that occurred throughout the United States. And he'd pretty much say anything for a pack of cigarettes.
In 1993, they actually, the DNA that was done on Sylvia Quayle's case proved absolutely that Toole was not involved in any way
in killing her. This was a totally false confession. And, unfortunately, it slowed the investigation,
but at the time, there really were no other leads. NANCY GRACE: 1981, believe it or not, detectives obtain DNA.
But at the time, they don't have the right tools to identify it. Fast forward 19 years to 2000, DNA technology has advanced.
Investigators enter the DNA sample into the National DNA database, CODIS. The technical definition of a cold case
is just something unsolved after three years. But in this case, because there's not
a lot of crime in Cherry Hill's village, this case was looked at all the time. And they actively investigated this case up until the time
Ottis Toole confessed. And then once he withdrew his confession, we started it up again in our office, probably the late '80s
through 1995. That's when we were able to exclude some suspects based on the very first typing of DNA.
There is one early suspect in this case, and it was an ex-boyfriend that Sylvia had been intimate with
and had allegedly in the past sexually assaulted her and possibly even broken into her home in the past.
So, of course, part of the investigation focused on that man. A DNA sample was taken from him.
And his DNA did not match the DNA that was found in the home that was deposited on the body of Sylvia Quayle.
And on those items around her, that was not his DNA. A good cold case investigator is saying,
OK, I don't have any new leads, I don't have any tips, but let's go back to that evidence
and see if there is something now that we can learn from that evidence that we've been holding, preserving as technology
advances that we're getting the latest techniques done on this case. And in 2000 when the testing was done, now
they had DNA that could be entered into the national database system. It's called CODIS.
It allows a DNA analyst to have a forensic sample from a crime scene, compare it to individuals that are in that database
because they're rapists, murderers, or just criminals. And that database has grown over time.
It has multiple millions of people in it. And it runs constantly, so if you do it in 2000
and somebody gets into the database in 2011, you're going to get a match. And that's going to give you a lead and a suspect
that you can then potentially prove committed the crime. NANCY GRACE: Investigators have high hopes for a DNA match
but their optimism turns to disappointment. That CODIS profile never hit. And really, what that means is that the killer was either dead
or certainly lying low and not getting into trouble where they would end up in the database themselves.
When a case goes cold, you've run out of investigative leads you go down every lead that you can.
And once that lead is closed, you kind of have to wait. And that's kind of what happened with Sylvia's case
as they investigated everything that they could and with the DNA in the system and being run
on a certain schedule, that's all we could do, was just sit and wait and wait for something to pop up.
So there was nothing else to do in the case but wait. NANCY GRACE: The 1981 murder of 34-year-old Sylvia Quayle
goes cold, and it stays that way nearly 40 years. Next on "Bloodline Detectives"-- can brand new, groundbreaking,
scientific DNA technology crack the case and finally bring peace to Sylvia Quayle's family?
[AUDIO LOGO] Arapahoe County, Colorado, 2020, investigators reopen for the second time the 1981 sex assault
and murder of 34-year-old Sylvia Quayle. Their best hope? To use the latest forensic science
to identify a DNA sample. JOHN KELLNER: As many years passed and this case remains
completely cold, we've got a new scientific advancement in genetic genealogy, a way for us
to not rely solely on that database to give us a hit, but to go out and actively search for somebody who might
have been responsible using all the different publicly available genetic genealogy databases out there.
And that's what Crime Stoppers and United Data Connect did. NANCY GRACE: United Data Connect is cofounded
by veteran prosecutor former District Attorney Mitch Morrissey, an expert in DNA technology.
Morrissey introduced the first DNA evidence used in a criminal trial in Denver. One of the most important things that happened
in this case when they reopened it and the testing was done in 2000, and it was done well,
and the young woman who did the DNA analysis in the case is somebody that I knew because she worked in the Denver lab.
She knew it was a single male sample that she had in some of the different things
that she tested. And as techniques and technology changes, she kept that case in mind.
She was now up at a lab in Jefferson County, and we had solved two of her cases.
And I was just talking to her one time, when I was picking up items of evidence, and she said, you know, Mitch,
there is a case in Cherry Hills Village that I worked on when I was at CBI. And that is a perfect case for you guys.
That has the amount of DNA you're going to need. It's a single-source sample. And I think you can solve that case.
And I think the reason she never forgot it is because of the way that Sylvia Quayle died.
DNA analysts have hearts too, and those things impact them. And she knew it was a brutal case.
GRANT GROSGEBAUER: In 2019, the case ultimately had been cold for many years until a couple
of different agencies got involved. United Data Connect was a newer genetic genealogy company.
They partner with Denver Crime Stoppers and ultimately reached out to by Cherry Hills Village.
MATT HANAGAN: Metro Denver Crime Stoppers had been really looking for ways to be helpful.
And one of the things that they landed on was helping provide financial assistance for some
of these cold cases and the biological testing that sometimes police departments can't afford.
For Metro Denver Crime Stoppers, it was an investment in solving homicides that, one, was sort
of new technology and two, was a really good way for them to partner with the community, which they always have.
We had to convince Detective Abeyta and the people at Cherry Hills Village that we could step in
and help them solve this case. I then started calling the Cherry Hills Village Police
Department, specifically Detective Abeyta to see if we could help them solve the case.
With the Metro Crime Stoppers and Data Connect, they work very closely together.
And the Metro Crime Stoppers actually was funding some of these cold cases. So we met.
We sat down with Crime Stoppers and Data Connect, and we all came to an agreement to let them do their analysis
and let them run with the case and see where it led. And they got together to determine
we have this identifiable profile based on the semen collected from the scene. Now, how do we match that to a person?
It's such a positive development when private companies like Metro Crime Stoppers and United
Data Connect become partners and help police departments, like the one in Cherry Hills.
Their combined efforts rest on a revolutionary forensic new tool, genetic genealogy.
This may be the last chance to find Sylvia Quayle's killer. Meanwhile, detectives keep Sylvia's sister, Jo,
updated on the progress. Every year, the Cherry Hills Police department send me a letter to tell me what the status of the case was,
which was very helpful. They've always been very supportive. MITCH MORRISSEY: It holds out hope that there's still people
that care in law enforcement, and there's still people that are looking. And they're looking every chance they get,
and they're using the latest techniques. Detective Abeyta, of course, wanted me to meet the police
chief, all of his superiors. They were on board. They were trying to solve this case for years.
They wanted to do the latest. They didn't really know about it, but we explained it all to 'em.
We sat down and told them what we would do. They were able to then provide me with some of the evidence,
and I was able to ship it off. And I got it sequenced. When you sequenced DNA, that's different than the techniques
that were used in 2000. You can then search commercial databases that are out there.
Many people think of Ancestry, 23andMe. Well, there are two. There's one called GEDmatch and there's one called Family Tree
DNA that allow law enforcement to use the DNA of the people that are in there. You find out people that may be related
that are in those databases, and what you're looking for is people that are cousins.
And on average, people have about 800 cousins out to the fourth cousin range. People that are concerned about us using DNA in these databases
to find people they've never even met, people that don't even live in the same town,
sometimes don't live in the same state or country, but they are extremely important.
They upload their DNA, and they say, yes, law enforcement can use it. Then you start to build the family tree down.
You've built it up to that most recent common ancestor. Now you're building it down to try
to find someone that's living at the time that your crime occurred. So you're looking at wedding announcements.
You're looking at obituaries, where they name the people that are still left. It's great for our genealogist to then
build those family trees. NANCY GRACE: Mitch Morrissey and his team put the science of genetic genealogy to work.
They process thousands of names, looking for a match. Finally, a breakthrough. In this case, I think we had over 3,000 people in the tree,
but we got it down to a point where it was one of two brothers. One was local. He lived in the town and worked in the town
right next to Cherry Hills Village. There's a town called Inglewood, which is another small town that is part of the Denver metro area.
He lived and worked in that area. The other brother lived in a town in Nebraska, a small town
there. Now you've got an investigative lead based on DNA, based on genealogy. And at that point, we give it over to the investigators.
MATT HANAGAN: In any cold case, we do a full evidence review. The first thing that I do on any case to make sure
that all the evidence exists, that you believe exists, to make sure you know what you're working
with, obviously, a review of the crime scene and the crime scene photos, which, of course, in this case
are extremely brutal. Two very good investigators in this case-- Detective Abeyta was still on the case,
and he was getting the assistance of the Arapahoe County DA's Office. They have a cold case investigator
named Matt Hanagan. And between the two of those individuals, they started running down the leads.
They were able to get a DNA sample from the brother that was local. The brother had a cup of coffee with a boss of some kind.
When he got up to go back to work, he left his cup there. The superior collected it.
The DNA that was left on the coffee cup did not match the DNA that was left in the crime
scene and Sylvia Quayle. Now we were down to one suspect, and that suspect lived in Nebraska.
JOHN KELLNER: I remember being told for the first time that we thought we knew who did it.
And that man's name was David Anderson. And when I heard that name, of course, he wasn't a name that made any sort of connection
to our case files. It wasn't a person who had been interviewed or was a suspect at any point in time.
But David Anderson was a man who, in the early 1980s, had been arrested some eight times in the Denver metro
area, who'd been suspected of home break-ins, even breaking into a home through the window,
just like Sylvia Quayle's home. 40 years after Sylvia Quayle's brutal murder, Cherry Hill detectives finally have a name--
David Anderson. But to be certain Anderson is the killer, they need a DNA sample from him.
That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." [AUDIO LOGO] [OMINOUS MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Cherry Hills, Colorado, 2021,
police are closing in on David Anderson, the prime suspect in the '81 murder and sex assault
of Sylvia Quayle. Thanks to the science of genetic genealogy, detectives already have a DNA match to Anderson
from the original crime scene. But now they need to confirm that match by getting new DNA from him.
JO HAMIT: My parents were both deceased at that time. So it was just me and my husband.
Two detectives had come to tell me that they had a lead, and then they explained to me a little bit
about the forensic genealogy and all that and how they were trying to narrow it down.
And then they contacted me a second time and told me they had narrowed it down to one family.
MITCH MORRISSEY: The town in Nebraska where this suspect was Cozad, Nebraska, a small town.
We knew where he was. We knew he had a criminal record. We knew he had been in trouble in Colorado as late as 1989.
So his criminal record corresponded to around the time that Sylvia Quayle was murdered, and all of the genealogy
and DNA was pointing at him. So the question was, who's going to get out there? And how are they going to do this?
MATT HANAGAN: Working again with United Data Connect, they have investigators. In particular, in this case, Bob Fuller,
who was a long-time criminal investigator here in the Denver metro area, agrees to go to Cozad, Nebraska,
where we now know David Anderson is living. We know he's living with his wife. We know where he works.
We are working in coordination with the Dawson County Sheriff's Office. MITCH MORRISSEY: Bob was an outstanding police officer,
and he was an outstanding investigator for the Denver District Attorney's Office.
He knew how to do surveillance. He knew how to collect DNA. He knew how to protect people's rights
and do it in a constitutional and legal way. He started his surveillance the first day.
He also established a rapport with the police department. He found out where the individual
was living, if he was married. NANCY GRACE: Investigator Bob Fuller has one goal and one goal only--
to obtain a DNA sample from David Anderson's trash. MATT HANAGAN: It's determined that David Anderson
lives in an apartment complex. There is a community trash bin. So you walk down the hall.
You go into a trash room, essentially. There's a large dumpster. You throw your trash bags in there.
MITCH MORRISSEY: What Bob was able to do then-- and he talked to the police chief.
They got their public works that collect the trash to take the dumpster down to a warehouse where
they then went through all of the trash and the dumpster. And what they were able to find were white plastic garbage bags
that had been tied and sealed. And in a couple of those bags, there was mail addressed to the individual we were looking for.
He selects items which he knows, based on his training experience, are good DNA items, which, you know,
cans, bottles, things that you put your lips on. Those items are collected by me and then rushed straight back
to the Cherry Hills Village Police Department, where they're turned and sent to the DNA lab.
They are rush tested. And on a Vanilla Coke can, David Anderson is a 100% match.
[OMINOUS MUSIC] When analysts at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation looked into that DNA profile from the Coke can,
they found that DNA profile matched to the exclusion of every other living person on this planet,
that that DNA profile matched the semen that was found inside Sylvia Quayle from her assailant.
They found that the semen from the carpet matched the person who had left the DNA profile,
and the Coke can matched to David Anderson. They even found that the Y-STR profile--
now a Y-STR profile is really the male profile associated with David Anderson. It's unique to his male lineage, that matched the saliva
that was found on her breast. So we had a clear connection to David Anderson not only as our suspect, but as our killer.
It was time for an arrest. NANCY GRACE: The DNA match is confirmed. Police move quickly to arrest David
Anderson 40 years after he murdered Sylvia Quayle. David Anderson is ultimately arrested soon after we
get this positive DNA hit. And luckily for us, he agrees to tell his side of the story.
He's brought back to the Dawson County Sheriff's Office to be interviewed by me and Detective Abeyta.
We showed him a photo of Sylvia in the pile of photos with other people that were just random people that we
selected from Motor Vehicles' database who looked similar to Sylvia. He said no, no to everyone, including Sylvia.
I said, well, would it surprise you if your DNA was found on a dead girl? And he said, my first thought would
be that I was being set up. And at that time, I said, well, let me help you out.
It's your semen. He said that the DNA was inside of her before I did. MATT HANAGAN: I knew at that time
he wasn't going to confess. I just felt that Lenny and I weren't going to get any further than we had.
GRANT GROSGEBAUER: What he told us was interesting because he was stuck with that answer
ultimately throughout the trial. But he told us he didn't know Sylvia Quayle. Even when confronted with the fact
that his DNA was found not only on her, but inside of her, he continued to say he didn't have a consensual relationship
with her. He never dated her. He was never at her house, and he didn't know how his DNA got there.
That is almost as good as a confession. When you have the person's DNA in an intimate place,
like we had in this case, for him to deny that he knew her, that he'd ever been in her house,
that he'd ever ejaculated in her house, to deny all those things is very important because the DNA proves
he did all of those things. LENNY ABEYTA: After the interview, that's when we present him with the search warrant for his DNA.
And we take two cotton swabs, and we rubbed them on the inside of his cheek. And then those are sealed.
And when we get back to Denver, we sent them to the lab for a confirmation. [OMINOUS MUSIC]
GRANT GROSGEBAUER: They had the Vanilla Coke can profile, which was consistent with all the other DNA
profiles they were developing. But really, they wanted to get the buccal swab. When they got the buccal swab from the defendant's cheek,
they confirmed it was the defendant, essentially to the exclusion of all other people on the planet
or who have ever lived because the numbers were so astronomically high. And what they found is that every piece of evidence
that they tested over the years with different technologies all came back to the same profile, that
of David Anderson, all these years later. After his arrest, the defendant pled not guilty to the charges.
And so he was facing two counts of murder, murder in the first degree by way of premeditation,
meaning he planned it, he meant to do this, and murder by means of a felony murder, which means during the act
of some other crime, in this case sexual assault or burglary, Sylvia Quayle ended up dead.
The "Bloodline Detectives" Believe they've closed the case against David Anderson.
But as we see next, his murder trial does not go as planned. [AUDIO LOGO] [OMINOUS MUSIC]
March, 2022, Arapahoe County, Colorado, David Anderson on trial for the 1981 sex assault
and murder of Sylvia Quayle. Anderson has been tracked by investigators to his home in Nebraska.
His DNA obtained from a Vanilla Coke can in the trash, and it matches the DNA found at the crime
scene 41 years earlier. When Mr. Anderson went to trial, you know, we had everything that you would hope
for in a cold case prosecution. You had a clear DNA profile. We had a clear chain of custody.
We had evidence putting this man, not just through his DNA at the scene, but in the Denver metro area in the early '80s.
And this was clearly our guy, and we are going to hold him accountable. And we're going to ask a jury to do just that.
Any time you have a jury trial where 12 people have to agree on something unanimously,
it's difficult. I can tell you as a former felony prosecutor, no matter how airtight you think your case is, you can never
predict what a jury will do. And that is exactly what happened in the trial of David Anderson, his first trial at least.
One juror did not agree with the other members of the jury. The judge had to declare a mistrial.
Arapahoe County prosecutors are so confident in their evidence, they strike a new jury almost immediately.
We were told after the fact, because we're not a part of the jury deliberations,
that they were heavily leaning towards our side. We retried the case about three months later.
JOHN KELLNER: We were not going to let this case go cold again. We were not going to let Mr. Anderson escape justice.
So we took this case back to trial, convince a jury of 12 that he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,
and they returned a verdict of guilty to all charges. After a five or six-day trial and an hour and a half
of deliberation, the jury came back with guilty to both counts of murder. I know the victim's sister who was still here
was able to see that verdict. Her father, her mother have not been around for many years,
and I think this pained them greatly to not know where their daughter's killer was,
to not have any justice in that sense. Now her family was able to see that the justice system not
only kept working this case, but was going to hold him accountable. And at 64, 65 years old, Mr. Anderson
is going to spend the rest of his life behind bars. And DNA proved that he deserves to spend the rest of his life
behind bars. [SENTIMENTAL MUSIC] JO HAMIT: When we got the conviction, it was just like this huge weight
was lifted off my shoulders. I felt so different. I was so relieved, and I was so filled with gratitude
for all the work that these people had done to make this happen. Mitch and his group, the police, Crime Stoppers,
all of those people, they all worked together. And I just have nothing but admiration for them
and the work that they do. They really looked at my sister as a person, not just a case,
and I appreciated that. In the murder of Sylvia Quayle, bloodline detectives reflect on the power
of genetic genealogy used to solve Sylvia's murder after 41 years. Genetic genealogy has taken it to a whole new level for us.
And so my message for anybody who thinks they've gotten away with a heinous crime like that, who thinks that just
because they've laid low for a number of years, is that we're coming for them. And we've been successful at it before.
We're going to keep doing it until we get them all. Going through this process with forensic genealogy,
people need to know that there is hope. There is a lot of hope to solve these cases.
A vicious, calculated sex attack and murder ignites a family that will never forget,
investigators who will not quit, and a partnership of scientists, citizen crime fighters,
and law enforcement who all joined forces to support the bloodline detectives. Genetic genealogy, utilized on behalf of Sylvia Quayle's
family and hundreds of others, growing by the day, emerges as a valuable tool to obtain justice.
I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us here on "Bloodline Detectives." [SENTIMENTAL MUSIC]
[AUDIO LOGO] [THEME MUSIC]

Arapahoe County, Colorado, 1981, the body of Sylvia Quayle is discovered by her father in her home. She’s been shot, stabbed and sexually assaulted. After a false confession and four decades of investigative work, science breaks this case open and justice finally prevails. Now in its third season, Bloodline Detectives is the leading true crime series that explores how police departments harness genetic genealogy to solve crimes that were once considered "unsolvable," bringing long-awaited answers to victims' families.

=============== Like, comment and subscribe if you’re ready for more true crime. Your favorite shows like World’s Most Evil Killers, Meet Marry Murder, Forensic Files, Unsolved Mysteries, Murdered At First Sight and Bloodline Detectives are all available to stream 24/7 for free via the FilmRise Streaming Network. You can access The FilmRise Streaming Network through most free App Platforms and Smart TV portals such as Amazon Fire TV, The Roku Channel, Android, iOS and many more.

Brief Summary

After 40 years, DNA technology identifies David Anderson as Sylvia Quayle's killer, leading to his conviction for her murder.

Key points

The Shocking Murder of Sylvia Quayle. In 1981, the body of 34-year-old Sylvia Quayle is discovered by her father, marking the only murder in Cherry Hills, Colorado.
A Killer's Confession. Death row inmate Ottis Toole confesses to Sylvia Quayle's murder, but DNA later proves he was innocent.
Groundbreaking Forensic Technology. After 40 years, new forensic technology finally solves the mystery of Sylvia Quayle's murder.
Breakthrough in Cold Case. Detectives finally narrow down the suspect to David Anderson after decades of investigation.
David Anderson Arrested. After 40 years, police arrest David Anderson, the prime suspect in Sylvia Quayle's murder.
Justice Served. A jury finds David Anderson guilty of murder, bringing closure to Sylvia Quayle's family.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is the only murder that has ever happened in this small town.

Nancy Grace discussing the rarity of the crime in Cherry Hills.

0:50WatchApr 5, 2023

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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