Donita Cutts ////// 599 | Forensic Files

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[Music] today's True Crime Story is a scary one it's about a woman living alone an intruder a brutal murder
a horrific crime scene followed by strange events confusion and a botched investigation
Dorothea Lane cuts the second AKA Danita L Cuts was an aggressive businesswoman who had worked her way up in the real
estate world she was a friendly vivacious and outgoing single 38 year old who had lots of friends
but sometime between 12 30 a.m and 5 A.M on Saturday July 29th 1978 someone entered cutz's lavishly restored
19th century home at 125 Wolf Street an Old Town Alexandria Virginia and killed her
and it looks like that same someone has managed to get away with murder for 44 years now
this is True Crime garage [Music] at 5 30 a.m on Saturday July 29 1978 the Alexandria fire department
responded to a fire at 125 Wolf Street in Old Town Alexandria Virginia the firefighters fought bravely to put out
the fires this is a single family home that they're responding to there's an upstairs there's a ground level and
there's also a basement and the place was well ablazed by the time that they arrived on the scene
they're responding to this Fire based off of phone calls they're receiving from Neighbors having witnessed smoke
coming from this home after they put out the fire they're in the process of combing through the scene trying to
figure out what caused the fire trying to clean up this residence about an hour after the fire is put out they come to a
very grisly Discovery and that is the body of a woman that was recovered from the
basement level of the home well this fire is going to be ruled in arson so this female that they find in the
basement is now going to be ruled a victim it would take a little bit of time Captain but authorities do identify
the remains of this person to be that of Dorothea Lane Cuts II also known as Danita L Cuts she is the home owner
she's 38 years old and she lives there by herself now a little bit of background on our victim you know first
I have to point out that the captain and I we are like Lord we'll never be royals
but when you hear Danita cuts his background she almost sounds like she is royalty tell me more kinds there so
Danita Cuts or Dorothea was born in Charleston South Carolina in 1940. she grew up on her parents 200 acre
estate wow and these are people that are rich enough that they name their property name their homes she was
brought up much like her mother her mother is Doria Lane Cuts first attending boarding school in Baltimore
and then Briarcliff Junior College in New York and then College in Switzerland the University of Geneva so she went to
some pretty impressive schools now danita's Father Richard Malcolm Cuts died in 1973. remember our case is
taking place in 1978 about five years later he was a brigadier general in the Marines and had served as an aide to
President Franklin D Roosevelt and he and his father are credited with inventing an anti-recoil device for
firearms so this is a long history of some very important and impressive people she goes by Danita that's a name
that she went by since she was a child yeah that's to distinguish herself from her mother who had a very similar first
name now she grew up loving Antiques and in fact Danita actually owned an antique
or two antique stores at one point in her life but in the 60s in the 1960s she moved to Alexandria Virginia to become a
real estate agent this in 1968 where she was rather successful as a real estate agent but
also keep in mind she does come from money so at the time of her death she had actually been a little bit
removed from the agency that she worked for she was moving on to maintain properties of her own she owned several
properties rental properties rehab type properties that she was in the process of being her own businesswoman so she
had moved on to greener pastures at this time now it seems like we say this a lot
with the cases that we cover but there are some definitely weird things about this case so pay attention you're
exactly right Captain it seems like all of these homicide cases especially the Cold Case ones that there are some
strange details in these cases now one detail that I find to be rather weird is Danita had been out of town leading up
to her murder so she recently come back into town right she goes out to dinner with some friends she's having a good
time she comes home a little after midnight and then what we know is the fire department is responding to a fire
at 5 30 A.M and after they clear the fire they find her dead in the basement it's believed
that the home was on fire for a minimum of 30 minutes before it was noticed and before firefighters arrived we do not
have an exact report based off of their arson investigation to tell us exactly when they believe the fire was started
but through the reports that have been released we know that they believe that at minimum that fire had been burning
for 30 minutes so she is home less than six hours before she is killed and her home is set on fire now I'm assuming
that she was actually killed in the house and then the house was set on fire to cover up the murder that likely seems
to be the situation here captain and we're going to go through some of the old articles out of 1978 that are about
this crime and I will some summarize all of these so we don't have to go through
every word but the first one that I want to go through is from July 31st 1978 and it's titled death in Old Town
and this comes from the Washington Post and I'm going to scan past the stuff that we've already covered but it says
between sometime between 12 30 a.m and 5 a.m on Saturday someone entered her home and
this is base and killed her based off of what police sources are telling the Washington Post police go on to say that
cuts his body she was found bound and gagged and found by firemen the body had been stuffed behind a basement furnace
and was lying in a puddle of blood it was almost an hour after they arrived on the scene again that was at 5 30 a.m
that the firemen found the body this while trying to clear smoke out of the basement the medical examiner's autopsy
report was scheduled to be released on this day so what we can see here is immediately this is Big Time news this
is an affluent area of Virginia this is a place where these types of crimes these types of murders do not
traditionally occur so now everybody in this area is going to be on edge and this the author of this article John
Feinstein he goes on to say that police remain baffled by the apparent murder arson
says the quote that he gets from the detective is for all intents and purposes we're right on Square One
they go on to say this is one of those kind of weird old-timey things that you you you question would you hear this the
detective stating this to the newspaper a detective John Turner said it's hard to make much progress on a weekend
what that doesn't make you feel very good does it yeah well we just don't we just don't like to work that hard on the
weekend it would be nice too if all murderers could take the weekend off as well because apparently the police might
not be working in exact apparently the police might not be working in Alexandria Virginia on the
weekend so Cuts is found bound and gagged and then seems like the the murderer moved her body behind the
furnace yeah she may have been so this is where the reports get a little weird and we've
seen this in plenty of other cases where the longer that a case is out there some
more information kind of trickles out kind of seeps out and you get a little more details and then you have to sit
back and look at them and go all right well both of these can't be right so which is
correct yeah it gets a little wonky donkey the wording here says in this article says
the body had been stuffed behind a basement furnace it was lying in a puddle of blood to me that implies that
it was moved very possibly moved there are some other reports that later come out that say that they believe maybe
that when the killer left the premises that she actually wasn't dead and she had tried to move herself that she was
trying to possibly get a get out of this basement but was very badly injured from the
attack right now one problem that police are going to have early on in this investigation is
that they were trying to contact all of Danita cutz's close friends and they said that a lot of the people
they were trying to speak with some of them were out of town you know we know that cuts didn't grow up in this area
that she had moved here for professional and other reasons later in her adult life
one person that they do state in the newspaper that they are particularly interested in speaking with was a former
boyfriend and the detective goes on to say that they would like to question this man to get more details about a
civil suit that Danita Cuts filed against him in 1976 so two years prior to the murder
and this I guess this suit took place this lawsuit took place shortly after Danita broke off the relationship again
according to this article we don't know the details of that relationship they also do not name the boyfriend in this
article there is another article out there that says something else that makes me wonder are they even talking
about the same man or potentially a different man where this other article states that she had broke up with a
boyfriend shortly before she was killed again without them naming either boyfriend or naming the boyfriend right
we cannot determine if in fact this is the same person we do know based off of all of the
witnesses and all of the people that knew her that she had an extensive social life and that she had a lot of
friends so wouldn't be surprising to any of us that she had broke off this relationship or for whatever reason this
relationship two years prior had dissolved and now she had had went on to another relationship that had also not
worked out what we do know is that she was traveling leading up to the time of her death she had just arrived back in
town on that Friday remember we know that she made it home that night and she came home shortly after midnight that
night that's why her body was found on Saturday that's why we know she was killed on Saturday but when we say she
was killed on Saturday and she arrived back into town on Friday keep in mind we're not even talking about an actual
24-hour window of time there she arrives back in town Friday afternoon maybe early evening we don't have that
exact hour right but she's killed she could have been killed very shortly after midnight
or attacked very shortly after midnight we don't know how long her attacker was in that home we do not know how they
gained access to the home we don't know how long there was between the attack and when the when the fire was set
we do know that at very minimum at the very minimum we have reason to believe that that fire burned for at least 30
minutes before firefighters were on scene and what a crazy scene that that must have been but we do have some
eyewitnesses of the crime scene well these are more people that knew of Danita and but this gives us a little
ability to flesh out the situation a little bit more here right so we have a a friend a former co-worker of hers her
name is Mary who said that the whole thing didn't make sense to her it didn't make any sense to her because she went
on to say that Danita was very strong she was aggressive she was in very good shape
she jogged all of the time what didn't make sense to her friend Mary is that she couldn't believe that
Danita wouldn't have put up a fight or scream or something those are her exact words she goes on to say it just wasn't
like her to be docile I don't understand it this is interesting to me here because given the area and taking a look
at Old Town the fact of her friends saying I just don't understand why she didn't put up a
fight or scream or something what we don't have is any ear Witnesses saying that they had heard some kind of scuffle
or some kind of fight or a woman screaming we don't have any of that well maybe because it happened in the
basement the attack could have happened there and be harder to hear obviously what I what I think that we might be
looking at here is a situation where either a she was attacked and incapacitated
and when she came to or was able to be in a in a state that she could potentially put up a fight or scream or
something that she may have already been bound and gagged by that time right or the assailant was able to control her up
to the point of tying her up and gagging her that makes you wonder too because you were saying
that she was out of town before all this happened like maybe somebody knew that she was out of town and maybe they knew
that she came from money and that they were in the in the house maybe trying to rob it when she came home that's a very
good point here and you could have a situation where yes this was a planned robbery
a plain burglary we should say and that the person was unaware that she would be
returning that night because we already stated she came from money she lived in an affluent area
not only that this woman once owned two antique stores antique store owners are antique collectors by Nature
her home was filled with valuable antiques yeah one man's junk is another man's treasure
there was another friend and this is a man that said that told police that the two of them were planning to go out
early that Saturday morning to look at some property in Alexandria that Danita was thinking of purchasing remember she
was in the real estate game as a worker bee so to speak for quite some time and now she's using her real estate
Investments so that she doesn't have to work for someone else and this person her friend tells police that they were
supposed to be leaving together that morning at 7 00 A.M remember Danita cuts his body was located discovered inside
that burning home at about 6 15 a.m to 6 30 a.m at the very latest so there might
be some strange and weird things in this case but one thing that's not that confusing here is the timeline yes we
have a very brief window of time to work with the the fusing thing seems to me what went down
in that window of time right so the general timeline is this we know that she returned from her vacation
Friday evening I don't know how long she was on this vacation but the key is she
returns that Friday evening we know that after returning home she goes to dinner
with friends we know that she returns to her home at about 12 15 to 12 30 a.m depending on which news article you read
the autopsy shows that Miss Cuts died shortly before 5 A.M just after 5 a.m neighbors smelled smoke
coming from the house called the fire department and the fire department is on the scene and actively putting out the
fire by 5 30 a.m one thing that's very odd and strange to me in this case here Captain is that we have a situation
where somebody went to the trouble to set multiple fires inside of this home and jammed the door to the basement
almost sealing Danita cuts his feet foreign [Music] [Music] thank you for joining us here in the
garage cheers to you all let's put on our our diapers because it's going to get weird in here
that's right tall cans in the air to everybody out there and listener land especially the people
in the back yeah there are two really great articles that come out after the fact right we were talking earlier about
articles that came out shortly after the murder shortly after the arson the next article that I want to hone in
on comes out in November of the same year of 1978. and again I'll read my summarized version of this article and
it reads the principal homicide detective assigned to investigate the murder of Alexandria
socialite Danita Cuts quit the force two weeks ago so this article comes out late
November Danita was killed Late July of the same year this article is about four
months later and it's telling us that the lead investigator the detective assigned to investigate this homicide
quit the force two weeks prior to the release of this article and the detective says that he quit the
force because he was angered over the police forces handling of a suspect in this unsolved case
so Joseph soos is the detective that we're talking about and at the time he was a nine-year veteran of the local
police force right so it's not his first rodeo exactly and he said that the Danita Cuts case was quote the final
straw in the Department's series of recent failures to quote live up to the high standards needed in police work
Seuss who has since joined the Alexandra City Sheriff's Office so he didn't leave
the biz entirely right he quit the police force be over this matter and it sounds like there was a lot of concerns
he had leading up to this unsolved homicide of Miss Cuts but it was the final straw for him to quit that force
and take a job with the sheriff's office but this isn't as strange as if he just
resigned from law enforcement period correct he he clearly has an issue with that department with the Department that
he worked for worked with for nine straight years so his resignation was effective the mid
part of November and he says was the latest in a series of incidents that indicate growing
morale and discipline problems within the 228 member police force 220 members of the police force and yet you have
another detective telling us you know it's difficult to solve these weekend homicides the murder of Danita
Cuts again 38 at the time was found beaten gagged and bound July 29th in the burned out basement of her Wolf Street
townhouse this has remained a mystery to her friends and Neighbors in the affluent
Old Town section the detective goes on to say I personally have never been involved in a case that was so poorly
controlled according to the detective the only worthwhile suspect in the case was allowed to be questioned by half a
dozen detectives who showed the suspect photos of the crime scene later according to no no yes later
according to this detective the suspect made statements about the murder to detectives but the detective soos he
says he was unable to determine whether these statements were the result of reviewing the photographs or whether the
suspect was really the murderer a point that detective Seuss said would be crucial in determining whether or not to
charge that particular suspect the detective goes on to tell us I hope these diapers are on
sorry that's that's not what he told us that's that's what the captain told us at the top of it I was going to say
that's that's weird that he brought up diapers I brought up diapers so the detective goes on to tell us he meaning
the suspect mentioned some things like a house being on fire a woman in a basement and a door being blocked at the
same time he denied that he had murdered anyone he rambled on about Visions the devil and about being a prophet
so you can see why it would be very difficult to tell whether this particular individual is reciting for
you things that he learned about the crime from the other detectives things that he learned about the crime from
seeing photographs of the crime scene or if he's telling you about something he actually participated in or was
responsible for well on somebody talking like this you know you go to mental illness and you start thinking well
maybe this guy is schizophrenic and and then he doesn't even know that he he he's not classifying what he did
as murder he burnt down the building or the building got burnt down somehow but because he bound and gagged her she
wasn't able to get free so she is a victim he murdered her but she how somebody I could see how somebody that
was not mentally stable could not see it in those terms yes and this suspect is troubling for many reasons yeah you
think the other part of this too that's incredibly concerning is the detectives handling of this suspect who seems
rather fragile to begin with if you're asking me based off of those very brief statements here now just like the
boyfriend or boyfriends this suspect is never named in any of these articles but
a little more background on this guy we learned that this suspect was arrested two days after the cuts murder
this when the suspect was found hiding under bushes outside in Old Town residence so he's in the same
neighborhood two days later hiding in the bushes outside of a home he was picked up he was charged with
attempted burglary and then released the next day the police arrested the suspect
several days later according to the detective when a butcher knife and a pocket watch found in his possession
were identified as items taken in another old town home burglary yeah and see I again you wonder
this guy doesn't seem mentally stable he gets into this area he starts breaking in his houses boy broke into a house
that the owner wasn't there so that he could just spend time there he could squat there he could have been squatting
there for days he took what we do have is in both of these incidents he was picked up outside
of a home where it's believed that he was attempting to burglarize that home and then later he's picked up again
after being in possession of items that we're taking taken in a previous burglary from that same neighborhood
right so he does make for a really good suspect even though he doesn't seem to be all there and your detectives may
have screwed up some of the questioning process the the Control process that you
want when speaking with these individuals and trying to get their statements and collect evidence
why he's hiding in the bushes I mean this guy has to go to the top of the suspect list and we know that he was
previously in somebody else's home illegally and we know for a fact that whoever
killed Danita Cuts we don't know why they were there or for what purpose that they were there but we do know that they
committed the murder in the attack inside the home now when this guy was charged with
burglary he was held in jail and then was sent to a state mental institution this in Marion Virginia where and you're
exactly right here Captain based you know your earlier statement this man was diagnosed as schizophrenic
after he was arrested for this the burglary charge he was later released this about two weeks sorry he was later
released I don't have the exact date of when he was released but we know that he
was released sometime in November of that same year so he could have been locked up or in
jail for several weeks if not several months before they let him go he was freed on his own personal recognizes
the possible suspect this is the information we do have is a 30 year old Alexandria man
according to his attorney receives a monthly Army pension for mental disability so what you're telling me is
that this guy is a suspect a good suspect we would both agree we're having a lot of agreements lately we're gonna
have to that's not good for Ratings turn up the heat a little bit in the garage get a
little angry but you're telling me that so they they get him to a mental hospital he gets better he gets let out
because he's now mentally stable but law enforcement is going to make this statement about him
give me that statement so this comes from the assistant Commonwealth's Attorney his name is Richard Mendelson
and his quote is I would say that the man is one of the most dangerous suspects the sheriff has
had in custody for a long long time I was shocked that what he goes on to say I'm shocked that the man is free
wow well let's take this for what it is right like it would be interesting to that's a powerful statement it's a very
powerful statement it would be interesting to interview Richard Mendelson to find out exactly what he
meant by that statement and I know there's people out there they're shaking their heads they're going come on
Colonel seems pretty clear to me what he's saying what I'm pointing out is to what degree
of Truth is this statement based off of the idea that he committed this Danita Cuts murder
right is Mendelson only saying this because he's convinced that this man killed this woman
when this man obviously was never charged with it he was never prosecuted for it we still don't know 44 years
later who killed this woman there's a chance that he did not do it is he simply basing basing this statement off
of the idea that he did Kill Danita Cuts right you see what I mean so it could be
it's a bold statement it's very bold that's a bold statement cotton it's but it could be a flawed statement if it's
based off of of things that are not fact yet they're not true yet so let's let's go on to to
examine this statement a little bit longer one you also wonder and I know I don't think this is what he's implying
but it's like you also wonder what what is this guy's military background right you know but but he says the word
dangerous right well when we know that he's receiving a check from the military for mental disability so we we also
don't know the full extent of his mental disability yeah right he could simply be
pointing out like even if he wasn't involved in the cuts murder this guy this guy's scary right based
off of like you said it could be a combination of his military background and what the military says about this
guy's mental disability is is he is he prone to just attack people willy-nilly for no reason at all well and it's like
I have guys that I'm friends with that were like ex-marines those guys are they're deadly guys they
could be deadly right but I don't consider them dangerous they're in control of their actions
right but they could be dangerous if they wanted to be they wake up feeling dangerous is this guy beyond the
capacity of knowing who the enemy is right the military is trained to protect us and in
some cases even kill or destroy the enemy is this guy so far gone that he is unable to figure out who the enemy is or
is he so paranoid that he believes everybody to be the enemy when here he is at home on our home turf
and he's he's even in a a very nice safe neighborhood at that the prosecutor goes
on to say in this article that a medical report from the state mental institution
revealed that the suspect was in fact fit to stand trial but only under the influence of tranquilizers
then Mendelson went on to tell us that he argued at the bail hearing right this is when
he's trying to tell the judge this dude's super dangerous don't Grant him bail we can't let him out
right he's telling the judge this guy is in his exact words are exceedingly dangerous
don't let him out on bail but the problem for that became what Mendelson would tell us I couldn't
tell the judge that he was a suspect in the Danita Cuts case right he doesn't have evidence to to
have evidence he doesn't have evidence to nail this guy he he's saying that in his own personal opinion and personal
expert professional expertise he did not feel confident while he felt confident telling the judge how
dangerous this man was he did not have the evidence or the backing from the police department to
tell the judge in good standing that this man is a suspect in a murder case well and if it was a different time they
probably could have pulled some DNA off of off of her house right and at least showed that he was possibly
they'd give more of a a reason to say well we think he was at least attempted to get into her house if we can pull
fingerprints or DNA off of like a door handle or something but now obviously it's not those times a
couple of more interesting parts to this article before we move on to the next one a police captain goes on to back up
the statement of the assistant Commonwealth attorney's statement by saying this is a police captain stating
that they did not have enough evidence to charge this man with murder he does say
we are still interested in this man we would certainly have to keep him in mind as a possible or as possibly involved
now he goes on to say that there were the the FBI was involved in putting together a psychological profile of
Danita Cuts killer right and he wouldn't go into the details of that psychological profile of the offender
but save you one he did disclose that one result of that profile was the FBI telling the Alexandria
police that and all probability the killer was mentally ill that according to the police captain
he's basically saying you guys know who our number one suspect is yeah I yeah maybe I I don't know that
that's I wouldn't say that that's his exact words I I'm leaving it at exactly what he told us that that his statement
is we are still interested in him we would certainly have to keep him in mind as possibly involved the FBI profile
they've told us that in all probability the killer was mentally ill Now that statement is very interesting to me for
a multitude of reasons they are seeing something at the crime scene or in relation to the victim and how the
victim was treated and how the victim was left that is indicating to these experts that we are dealing with a
person who is mentally ill at the time of this attack and at the time of setting these fires right now this
article gives us a little more detail and that's only because it's released two years after the murder and they it
talks about a police reconstruct production of the crime and it says that Danita Cuts came in her
front door alone shortly after midnight on Saturday July 29 1978. she climbed the stairs to her second floor bedroom
turning on the lights as she went she turned down her bed took off her clothes and dropped them on the seat of a
rocking chair she put on a nightgown and flicked on the television set choosing Channel 5 which runs all night
movies on Saturdays she then went to the bathroom to wash up shortly after this an unknown person
confronted Cuts in her house perhaps it was an intruder who had come through an unlocked bedroom window perhaps it was a
Prowler attracted by the lights that forced his way in perhaps it was a friend with a grudge that had let
himself or herself in with a key those were the working theories two years into this investigation and again
they go back to the fact that six hours after the need of cuts returned to her home she was dead
remember her body was found in the cellar right the extra details we get here it's interesting of the
Reconstruction so the the upstairs portion of this home must have been left in a way or not as damaged as some of
the other portions of the home that they were able to make out these details that
that she likely did this in this order and then the attack occurred later we learned that of some of the injuries
suffered by our victim the autopsy determined that she had been struck on the head
and that she died from asphyxiation this caused by the smoke from the fire now we should say fires
because this article gives us the detail that there were seven fires set inside the home yeah that sounds like a madman
so somebody looking to either completely destroy the scene or at least cover his
tracks didn't set one fire didn't set two in fact there were some early articles that hinted at the
possibility of Three Fires this article that gives us the most details states that there had been seven fires
set inside that home well and at this time of this article two years later we have police firemen authorities
telling us the same thing that you just stated there right at this point in the in the case
they've not arrested anybody they've not charged anybody with her murder and they're saying you know one reason that
the police have had difficulty developing a lead in this case is that firemen were
fighting seven blazes in the house may have inadvertently obliterated critical evidence
I think that's probably highly likely in this situation yeah it definitely happened now beyond the strange fact of
setting seven different fires this is a little bit weird too so they say that when cuts's body was
found she was lying face down in a four foot wide crawl space 10 feet from a basement window
she had been bound hand and foot with quote everything in the house end quote this is coming from our detective who
quit the force to join the Sheriff's Office so I feel like do you feel like that
gives him a little more street cred than some of these other statements a little
more gangster a little more gangster uh according to detective soos he says that
she was bound with everything in the house and he goes on to elaborate on that statement saying sweaters slacks
masking tape electric cord even a pair of socks so you have somebody who sets seven fires you have somebody that seems
to be tying her up with everything that they can get their hands on inside of the house he goes on to tell us that the
killer apparently hit cuts on the head with an antique lamp and this is based off of police finding a shattered base
in the house and then left her for dead in a cedar closet with the door barricaded in the
basement this guy's an absolute animal the detective goes on to say that cuts somehow got one foot free and probably
made her way up the basement stairs only to find the door to the main part of the
house barricaded in the Gathering smoke she must have thought of a little window at the end of
the crawl space as her last chance she was pretty resourceful the detective says and he goes on to say she damn near
made it so he's seeing stuff at the crime scene that indicates that she clearly was not
dead by the time that the killer left the premises right and we know that she died from smoke inhalation but he jammed
the killer jammed the door shut and even when she managed to wiggle free from all
of her restraints again she's tied up with quote everything in the house according to the detective
she finds the door jammed up and then tries to make her way to the window and unfortunately she was unsuccessful now
the police don't do go on to tell us that they never found anything missing from the house and more than 100
000 dollars worth of jewelry remained hidden in a secret compartment beneath the main staircase no keys were
unaccounted for and no windows were broken according to the detective also the victim was not sexually assaulted
according to the medical examiner's report like what you're talking about with the suspect he's stating you know
there's this fire and you know he's basically stating the whole crime scene in in his ramblings before he gets his
mental health checked and it just seems like it just lines up perfectly with this crime police go on
to tell us that they did find a jammed handgun at the house and they say that they believe possibly
the murderer used that to intimidate the victim maybe this is why she allowed herself to be bound to some extent or
again I this broken base to the lamp you almost wonder if if he attacked her first
hitting her over the head with this lamp before he tied her up to begin with yeah I almost leaned towards
that like there she came home there was an attack and then because she was uh incapacitated at the time then he was
able to bound her up in 1980 an article came out that told us that there's not a lot of Hope for
solving this case and they point out that the Kurt Cuts murder has never been solved even to
this day forget about 1980. this even though the police department interviewed more people
devoted more man hours ran more polygraph tests and spent more money for travel and expenses than in any
other investigation in the city's history as of the time of this writing which was 1980.
they go on to tell us that the police do not expect to be able to solve the case
and in fact they go on to site that one of the complications is a lieutenant Arthur bratcher Who supervised this
investigation and also supervised 14 other unsolved homicides in the area was placed on inactive status so you have
one of the leads here who is not in good with his own agency and has been in charge of supervising and overseeing
several homicide investigations all that remained unsolved as of 1980. can't imagine how frustrating this is not just
for the family but for the community as well and the thing that really intrigues
me here Captain is I would love to get my hands and and view it with my own eyeballs the FBI profile the
psychological Pro profile that was put together on the likely offender of this murder and I cannot get past
these two very bizarre facts of this case of one there were seven different fire set
in this home and two that the victim was bound hand and foot with quote everything in the house sweaters slacks
masking tape electric cord and even a pair of socks these are two things that are very different
these are outlier items very different from how many cases have we covered here in the garage hundreds
billions and I cannot think of a case that involved one or both of these situations
it's one of those cases that you would love to put in front of somebody like Dr James a brussel
or former FBI agent John Douglas and get their thoughts and opinions on this case
and then obviously if we had the suspect's name we could be able to go back and look at their criminal history
or to go and see what they did because they were released did they commit other crimes or did this person get the the
the medical treatment that they needed and they're fine now that they got medical treatment well and something
that you hit on earlier Captain is the community you can't imagine the frustration from the family but also you
can't imagine the frustration from this community you also can't imagine the fear
the fear of the people in the community because we know that the newspapers and the
reporters had a difficult time interviewing people for these articles that they wrote about the case over the
years and even years after the murder there were still neighbors and people in that neighborhood that refused to speak
to newspapers or to the media at the time for fear of retaliation from Danita cutz's killer
foreign [Music] thank you so much for joining us here in the garage Colonel do we have any
recommended reading for the beautiful listener yes we do Captain this week we are recommending brainstorm an
investigation of the mysterious death of film star Natalie Wood by Sam Peroni I tell you what I wish this book was out
back when we covered the Natalie Wood case because Sam Perrone did a brilliant job of putting this book together he
lays out the case presents all the facts a lot of new facts that he has uncovered
and he doesn't tell you what to think he lets you decide for yourself what you think really happened after examining
everything that he's put together that's called brainstorm an investigation of the mysterious death of film star
Natalie Wood by Sam Perrone you can find that great title and many more on our website's recommended page at truecrime
garage.com if you need more True Crime garage for your earballs check out our bonus show exclusively on Stitcher here
it's called off the Record and until next week be good be kind and don't litter [Music]
[Applause] thank you foreign

Donita Cutts ////// 599

Part 1 of 1

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

Donita Cutts was a successful young business woman. She lived alone in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. In the early morning hours of July 29th, 1978 someone entered Donita’s home and attacked her. Donita was brutally killed and her home set on fire so that the killer could cover his tracks. This was a high priority investigation but there were problems. It has been 44 years since her murder and the killer has yet to be found.

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses the unsolved murder of Danita L. Cuts and the investigation's complications.

Key points

The Murder of Danita Cuts. A shocking true crime story about a woman found dead in her home after a fire.
Detective Quits Over Case Handling. The lead investigator resigns, citing frustrations with the police department's handling of the case.
The Mysterious Murder of Danita Cuts. Danita Cuts was found murdered in her home, leading to a complex investigation.
A Troubling Suspect Emerges. A suspect with a history of mental illness and burglary is linked to the case.
Seven Fires Set at the Crime Scene. The investigation reveals that seven fires were set inside Cuts' home, complicating evidence collection.
Bizarre Facts. Two very bizarre facts stand out in this case: seven fires and the victim bound.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She was a friendly, vivacious, and outgoing single 38-year-old.

Description of the victim, Danita Cuts.

3:06WatchOct 20, 2022

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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