Finally Identified: Dade County Jane Doe | Bloodline Detectives with Nancy Grace | Forensic Files

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: December 1988, nine days before Christmas, a woman's body discovered beside Interstate 59,
Dade County, Georgia. It's a murder that will become an extremely difficult challenge for detectives.
They searched her pockets. It looked like there may have been a cellophane wrapper
of some sort and $4. Just didn't tell us very much. NANCY GRACE: Years pass, and the mystery of the victim's
identity goes unsolved. KRISTEN MITTELMAN: I've met investigators. And their white whale, it's something
that they can't go to sleep without thinking about every single night. Their family suffers.
It truly is a blast radius that's bigger than you can imagine. NANCY GRACE: One detective team never gives up
finding the truth about her life and giving her dignity in death. I don't ever give up on these cases.
Because nobody speaks for the victim if it's not us. NANCY GRACE: Time can be the enemy
of so many investigations. But in this case, time may be the savior. JOE MONTGOMERY: We had such good biological evidence.
I knew that as soon as science changed, we'd be able to catch up. NANCY GRACE: The real breakthrough
comes with the arrival of a unique forensic tool that seems to unlock impossible cases--
Investigative Genetic Genealogy. MICHAEL VOGEN: I like to make sure that detectives know that there is a new technology out there.
We can relook at cases and let us see what evidence is there. We may be able to be that one missing piece
to moving the case forward. NANCY GRACE: Can science combined with a family tree
reveal the secrets in this case? I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives."
[THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Dade County in the Northwestern corner of Georgia in the 1980s, a quiet community
far from the big city. It's a very rural town, very family oriented. Good place to live and raise a family.
TIM MCKAIG: I grew up on Lookout Mountain. Everybody was kin to everybody else. We all knew one another.
Everybody was generous. If somebody had a problem, everybody come to help. Everybody was your friend.
It's pretty quiet around here. The way we like it. NANCY GRACE: Dade County's peace and quiet ends
abruptly December 16, 1988. A group of road workers see what they believe is a body next to northbound I-59,
just five miles from Georgia's state line with Alabama. The body was found by a Georgia Department
of Transportation worker. They were fixing to cut that side of the median and the side of the road.
And they noticed a body down at the bottom of a hill of an entrance ramp, about five and a half miles
from the Alabama-Georgia line. TIM MCKAIG: One of them left the scene and come to Trenton, which is probably seven miles.
And, uh, he found a Sheriff's deputy in the parking lot of the Red Food store and told him that they
had just found a body. So, of course, the deputy proceeded immediately out to the scene.
EVAN STONE: When we got to call, Sandra Gray and I were on the ambulance. Sergeant Smith, one of the first officers on the scene,
he had already assessed the body. And the body was deceased and, you know, that it was no doubt in a form of decay.
But we assessed the body ourselves. TIM MCKAIG: Don Hicks was the detective back then.
He went to the scene. And Jim White was another detective, he went to the scene.
I know they did a lot of video and a lot of still photographs. JOE MONTGOMERY: Their job was to basically rope it off.
And they went down both sides of the highway to look for any other clues that they might have.
They would send them to the closest local business to see if they knew of anyone that
had been around several days that might be missing. She was 5' 7". She had reddish hair.
She was wearing a sweatshirt and blue jeans. TIM MCKAIG: They specified Calvin Klein jeans.
She had on a pair of shoes, but no socks. And she had on a, uh-- a blouse, like a thermal-type blouse.
But her blouse was pulled up over the top of her breasts. JOE MONTGOMERY: Her hands were underneath her.
They were in fairly good condition. Her body, her face was, uh-- had a good bit of decomposition because of the,
uh-- the temperature and the injuries that she had. EVAN STONE: Because December, it would freeze at night.
And it would warm up in the daytime above freezing. So knowing how long the body had been out there was-- was--
I know was a problem with the investigators. JOE MONTGOMERY: The body had a gold chain
around its neck and then, like, a pinky ring on one of the fingers. TIM MCKAIG: And they searched her pockets.
It looked like there may have been a partial cigarette box, a cellophane wrapper
of some sort, and $4. Just didn't tell us very much. RAY CROSS: We had very little technology
back then, fingerprinting and blood typing and stuff like that. But as far as any kind of DNA testing or anything
like that, it was not-- not available back then. NANCY GRACE: The investigation begins
with a series of questions. Who is this? How did she die? How did her body end up on Interstate 59?
BRIAN OXMAN: One of the telling signs was this young lady had no underwear on. Now, to an old-time crime investigator, that's ominous.
Why? Because it tells the old-time investigators she was sexually assaulted somewhere else,
and then told to get dressed and put on her clothes, put into a vehicle, and transport it to this location.
And in my mind, she was killed at this location and then her body was rolled down the embankment.
NANCY GRACE: The body is sent to the local coroner. And it is hoped an autopsy will reveal the cause of death.
JOE MONTGOMERY: The manner and cause of the death from the autopsy was manual strangulation.
Her hyoid bone had been crushed. You could see the pressure that was put on her neck
for the manual strangulation. TIM MCKAIG: When GBI went and viewed the body at the hospital, they did collect
some hairs from the body. Of course, those have to be analyzed at the lab. And then when the medical examiner conducted the autopsy,
the medical examiner collected pubic hairs from the body. BRIAN OXMAN: They found semen, which means that this was
a violent sexual assault. They weren't able to exactly identify how old she was, which is
really very critical when you are dealing with missing persons. Investigators have no witnesses and no time of death.
They reach out to the National Crime Information Center where data on missing people is held.
Maybe, just maybe if they can determine someone missing around the same time Jane Doe's body is discovered,
they can ultimately identify her. In 1988, the biggest thing they would do was put out bulletins on the NCIC computer
to agencies in the surrounding area. Because we were so close to Alabama and Tennessee,
it would have been like a tri-state area. Because they would have tried to make sure
it was somebody local first before they expanded the search out farther. We checked with all the other surrounding agencies
if they had missing persons and kind of went from there. We ended up doing a composite drawing and released that.
We would use the media as much as we could. We would let them know we had an unidentified person.
We would go to the local businesses around. Hey, have you seen anybody that, you know,
that you've not seen before that might be missing? NANCY GRACE: Detectives are confident once they've
got a name, just a name, it will lead to crucial clues. Jane Doe, who became known as Rising Fawn Jane
Doe because the Rising Fawn off ramp to the Interstate 59 was just south of where she was found.
NANCY GRACE: Rising Fawn Jane Doe's real name is still unknown to detectives. But they are getting a clearer picture of her facial features.
It was all in an attempt to identify who she is so we could have someplace to go
with this investigation. Can Georgia detectives uncover new clues to reveal Jane Doe's identity and, ultimately,
that of her killer? That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
NANCY GRACE: December 1988, a woman's body discovered next to Interstate 59, Dade County, Georgia.
Detectives cannot identify the woman who they name Rising Fawn Jane Doe. They turn to experts who use her skull to create a clay
model of what Jane looks like. They circulated it to the population, hoping somebody
would identify, somebody would recognize. It didn't happen here. By 1990, advances in DNA sequencing offer Dade County
detectives renewed hope that they may be able to identify Rising Fawn Jane Doe. They extract DNA from her remains.
And that sample is sent to the FBI in Washington DC in the hopes of finding a match.
Meanwhile, the body of the unidentified woman remains in a morgue, unclaimed by anyone.
This was somebody's daughter. We still didn't know who she was. We needed to do something.
So the community came together. At that time, Ronnie Moore was the director. And we actually had a-- we had a funeral.
If you think about a community that does a funeral for somebody they don't even know and had such
a great turnout, I mean, that just speaks volumes about the community. TIM MCKAIG: There was a sign-in log.
People signed the register. EVAN STONE: We all signed our names, you know, saying, hey, we were here, you know?
Because at some point in time, we were hopeful that the family could get some type of closure.
And I sure do hope that the family was able to realize that this community cared enough to give
her a proper burial. She had a formal resting place here in Dade County, waiting to find out her identity.
The DNA sample, unfortunately, does not advance the case at all. There's not a match.
10 long years pass. And then in the early 2000s, cold case detectives from the GBI, Georgia Bureau of Investigation,
take another look. At the time, I was the cold case consultant for the office. So I took an interest in the case
and just started reading the case. I knew a little bit about the case and was trying to, you know, see what we could
do to bring it to a resolution. NANCY GRACE: A brand new look by cold-case investigators
and the creation in 2003 of the National Missing Persons Task Force might provide a break in the case.
Back in the early 2000s, we had been getting tips from some of the websites of unidentified persons
that this body that we had in Dade was this person. And we would get calls from other agencies, hey,
this is our person. NANCY GRACE: But none of the new tips received are the key to identifying Rising Fawn Jane Doe.
Cold-case detectives now turn their attention to the possibility the killer may be a truck driver who crosses the busy interstates every day.
JOE MONTGOMERY: The way that she was assaulted, the way that she was beaten, where she was found--
that's a very popular truck route between Chattanooga and Birmingham, Nashville and Birmingham.
So we always felt like the method of the murder and the route was more of a serial truck driver
killer. There were 12, 12 brutal murders, rapes of women with bodies being dumped.
And they looked into seeing whether there was an MO, modus operandi, that they could connect to these murders
and, in the 1980s, whether there was a blood type which could connect this murder to these other 12
unsolved crimes. That turned out to be a big blank. They could not connect it to any of those 12 murders.
They even eliminated a couple known serial killers from being the suspect. And that was actually done before the FBI was involved.
One of those serial killers-- Samuel Little, one of America's most notorious serial killers.
After he's captured, Samuel Little confesses to 93 murders, making him the most prolific serial killer in US history.
But is he also the killer of Rising Fawn Jane Doe? We had one murder in Dade County from Sam Little.
And the working theory at that time is he might possibly be involved because he had been in this area.
He'd been in Chattanooga. He had taken a girl from a bar in Chattanooga, killed her in Dade County, and then dumped her body off.
And some of the similarities in his methods were similar with this young lady. I had sent an agent to Texas to interview Sam.
And he had talked about all the cases in Georgia he had done, plus the case that he had done here in Dade County.
So we pretty much, from that point on, realized that it was not going to be Sam Little.
To identify Rising Fawn Jane Doe, detectives will need a more powerful investigative tool.
We see what that is next on "Bloodline Detectives." [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
NANCY GRACE: December 1988, a woman's body discovered beside Interstate 59, Dade County, Georgia.
27 years later, detectives still cannot identify the woman they name Rising Fawn Jane Doe.
JOE MONTGOMERY: We had realized back in 2005 that we still had evidence at the FBI crime lab
that had never been processed. So once we got that evidence processed, we got a DNA profile developed.
We placed that in the CODIS system and in the missing persons CODIS database, waiting for some type of results from that.
The mainstay testing technique for DNA in forensics is CODIS testing. So this is premised on a piece of equipment that
was introduced 30 years ago. And it allows you to collect about 20 markers in the DNA.
And that information can be used to exclude you from a crime scene. It can be used to do exact matches into this national law
enforcement database. 2018, the case hits another dead end. But still Rising Fawn Jane Doe is not forgotten.
Detectives hear about a new technological breakthrough, a breakthrough that's cracking seemingly impossible cases,
including one high-profile murder investigation in California. JOE MONTGOMERY: I had two agents who had gone to a seminar
and had met with the detectives from the Golden State Killer. And they were discussing how that they
had done the genealogy DNA. So we looked at that as a possibility. At the time, the FBI, the violent crimes group in Atlanta
was using that to help solve cases. I was able to get a meeting with Georgia Bureau
of Investigation and met with SAC Joe Montgomery and basically asked if they had any cases that
might have genealogy potential. And this was the one that was most on their radar.
And they thought there was good potential for genealogy. We had such good biological evidence,
both DNA from the victim and from the suspect. So I knew that as soon as science changed,
we'd be able to catch up. NANCY GRACE: The science of investigative genetic genealogy
gives a new generation of investigators an advantage in solving cold cases. JOE MONTGOMERY: The genealogy DNA is very complicated.
And I look at it like a tree that you go outwards and then you work your way back in.
It's a technique that we use on mainly cold cases, but cases that otherwise couldn't be solved
using conventional techniques. So we obtain a SNP profile from a private lab. The FBI works with multiple private labs.
We obtain that profile. We upload it to databases that work with law enforcement.
And we find genetic relatives. From that point, we conduct the genealogy process,
build family trees, all in order to sort of triangulate who that contributor is, whether it's a victim of a case
or the subject of a case. The FBI did the genealogy on this case. Tim Burke worked on it with his team.
Tim Burke is the agent that approached us and wanted to know if Othram can help identify
this victim whose remains were found on the side of the road. NANCY GRACE: For investigative genetic genealogy
to deliver a name, the scientists need quality DNA samples. This case is old, dating back to 1988.
So "Bloodline Detectives" have their fingers crossed. Forensic genetic genealogy can't be performed
without having high performing DNA in a profile that you can upload to these genealogical databases and get good
matches for, get clean matches that's not missing people's information because you don't really
have all the DNA letters there. And that's what we have developed, which is the scientific methods necessary in order
to build a profile that can be used for forensic genetic genealogy. DAVID MITTELMAN: There's a lot of groundwork that's been done,
exceptional investigative work. And all they're looking for is a little bit of technology
to push them over that barrier so they can generate an investigative lead. And then we're able to get a little bit more information
from the crime scene that enables them to produce an investigative lead that takes the case to a positive outcome.
And doing that for both the victim and the suspect was just really special. We were thrilled and honored to be trusted with the case
and to have the opportunity to assist. We built a DNA profile using forensic-grade genome
sequencing. And we delivered that profile back to the investigative team at the bureau.
I was involved in delivering the leads back to law enforcement and working with their genealogists that
were working to build out family trees. David and I were on calls with the GBI and local law
enforcement, basically handing over information that our team was finding and collaborating with them
towards an identification. There's always excitement when we get to start the genealogy process,
where we identify genetic relatives and ultimately narrow it down to figuring out who the victim is.
The profile was actually quite good. We were able to get matches. NANCY GRACE: The match is to a young woman who
was missing not long before the discovery of the body on Interstate 59. TIM BURKE: From the time we obtained a SNP from Othram,
it was approximately three months until we identified who we believed the victim was.
And that was Stacey Lyn Chahorski. [DRAMATIC MUSIC] We knew we still had some work.
Even when the genealogy pointed to Stacey Lyn being our victim, we still knew we had some work.
And that involved flying to Michigan to interview family members. Stacey's family members were able to provide us
a fingerprint card that Stacey had filled out during Career Day at school when she was younger.
There were partial prints obtained from Stacey at the crime scene. And Georgia Bureau of Investigation
was able to do an analysis, a comparison. And then we also did follow on DNA. Finally, Rising Fawn Jane Doe's true name revealed.
She's Stacey Lyn Chahorski, a young woman whose mom lives in Norton Shores, Michigan.
Investigators travel north to interview her family. TIM BURKE: People never forget.
It had been almost 35 years. And Stacey still had people that loved her and cared for her.
And you kind of know that going into these cases, that there's going to be people you're gonna find that have
wondered what happened to them and that care and that still love them. And that was reinforced when I got
to-- to meet Stacey's family. Stacey's mother had reported her missing early 1989, so just
approximately a month from when she was found to when she was reported missing in Michigan.
She had last spoken with her mother approximately September 1988 and that she, in that phone call, told her mom,
I believe, she was in Knoxville area of Tennessee, which actually is not that far from Dade County.
NANCY GRACE: To confirm, the body is, in fact, that of Stacey Lyn Chahorski, close family
members agree to give DNA samples for testing. As soon as those results come back,
detectives deliver the bittersweet news to Stacey's family. JOE MONTGOMERY: It was such a relief and such a great feeling
to be able to tell her we've located your daughter. And we're gonna return her home to you.
So that was very satisfying and just a great relief after all this time. Stacey's mother was very upset.
She was very relieved. She started crying. I started crying. So she had really believed that she would never be found
and never be returned home. And it was just such a relief to her. And it was a great relief to me to bring that closure to her.
TIM BURKE: All those years later, she remembered the necklace, specifically. That was just kind of a small piece of Stacey
that we could give back to the family all these years later. NANCY GRACE: The name alone allows one question
to be answered, a question that puzzled detectives for decades-- who is Rising Fawn Jane Doe?
But now who is Stacey Lyn Chahorski? TIM BURKE: From talking to family members, she was adventurous.
She was optimistic, you know? She was young. From talking to her mom, she was very independent.
And she was loved. She was a sister, a friend. Just a carefree, happy-go-lucky person,
enjoying life. KRISTEN MITTELMAN: Her whole life was ahead of her. And she was on an adventure to figure herself out
and ended up in tragedy. Once that we got the victim identified, we felt like that was a better starting point
for us to find the killer. TIM BURKE: First thing we did was we talked to family.
And once we confirmed that it was Stacey, there was a theory that it was likely a trucker,
hitchhiker-type situation. But we didn't know that. So maybe there was somebody the family could point us towards.
So we did a thorough interview with the family member of known associates with a focus on male associates.
And that did not turn up any actionable leads. So then we turned to what we knew we had was
the DNA from the crime scene. So the next step for us was to go back to Othram and have them do the genealogy DNA profile on our perpetrator.
We were remarkably surprised to find out that after her identification, they had also mentioned to us
that they had recovered DNA from the scene that belonged to an unknown male, which might point to who might have been
in contact with her last before she died and could even be the person responsible for her death.
And so we were then offered-- this was kind of unique because we usually work the identity
of a suspect or a victim. In this case, it was both. And so months later, they came back to us and said,
we know that there's an unknown profile. And at the time, the agency didn't have the resources.
They didn't have the funding to pay for this. Investigative genetic genealogy is a process that utilizes high-tech laboratories.
The technology and man hours involved are very expensive. And the process ends up being very costly.
Both local and federal law enforcement will often look for financial help from outside the government.
In the case of Stacey Lyn Chahorski the FBI got support from a crowd-funding organization
called DNA Solves. DNA Solves is a initiative that we-- that we started back in 2020.
We built our own site that encouraged philanthropy crowdfunding and-- and other sorts of support to help smaller agencies that
don't yet have the budgets for these kind of cases through community support. One of the things that is still missing is the funding.
This is new technology. It takes a long time for federal government to fund new technologies.
It takes a long time for state governments to adopt and fund these new technologies.
Investigators now move quickly to create the killer's DNA profile. Who is he? Is he still alive?
And can he be brought to justice? That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: May 2022, over 30 years since a young woman's body found beside Interstate
59, Dade County, Georgia. Detectives using investigative genetic genealogy finally have her name.
Stacey Lyn Chahorski. But now they go public to find the last piece of the puzzle, the identity of Stacey's killer.
Ms. Chahorski was buried up here in Dade County since 1989 in an unmarked grave, known only as Jane Doe.
She'll be reunited with her family as soon as we can. Today marks the day where we hunt for the killer now.
NANCY GRACE: Even though this murder dates back to 1988, "Bloodline Detectives" have a viable DNA
sample from the man they believe is Stacey's killer. Law enforcement said, we want to use
the same technology to try to identify the perpetrator. Can you help us? And so again we did that feasibility analysis to measure
the properties of that DNA. It was also contaminated because it was found outside on her pants.
And there was obviously much less DNA from the perpetrator than there is the victim.
When they finally got to a good point, they came up with the name of Wise. So we then began, from that point,
trying to find relatives of Mr. Wise to do DNA comparison with that. They had numerous leads that went
out throughout the country. They had some that went to North Carolina, some that
went to Baltimore, some that went to Detroit, some that went to other parts of Michigan.
We had two agents go to the relatives and approach them and explain what they were doing
and tell them what they were trying to do and if they would permit us to get DNA from them
in order to make sure that we had the right person for this murder. David started out explaining why they were there,
that they'd had an old homicide investigation they were trying to clear and that they had some DNA evidence they
were trying to compare it with. When you meet with families and tell them that their loved one has done a murder,
there's a lot-- well, they-- they always defend them and say no, they would never do this.
They are not that type of person. It didn't happen in this case. NANCY GRACE: It's a huge moment.
After over 30 years, detectives finally have a name-- Henry Wise. I'd interviewed and collected consensual DNA sample
from a living family member. And that sample confirmed that it was Henry Wise. NANCY GRACE: But what more is known about Henry Wise?
He was, at the time, 34 years old. He was employed by a trucking company who would do his route between Birmingham and Chattanooga.
JOE MONTGOMERY: And he was a very large man. He had the nickname of Hoss, from the character
in the bonanza series Hoss Cartwright. He was a very, very big man. He was very mean.
And things didn't go his way, he always resorted to violence. He had a violent temper.
And he had multiple violent confrontations with women, to including women close to him.
His criminal history went back to the '80s. It was kind of hard to find all these records.
But there were multiple arrests in Florida. And we actually found that he had been arrested
in South Georgia in 1988, which was interesting before we kind of confirmed that it was him.
Because that places him in the state during the approximate time that Stacey was found.
NANCY GRACE: Wise is a truck driver on weekdays. Weekends he drives stunt cars. It was 1999.
He was a stunt driver at Myrtle Beach Speedway. And he died in a crash, burned to death.
TIM BURKE: It would have been more rewarding if he had been alive. But we can't control that.
And I think it's not the-- the only case we've had where we've identified a subject who's deceased.
These cases are real old. We know as we build, as we use this technique that that may be the case.
We may be dealing with someone that's deceased. I believe that the good Lord has justice for everybody.
Sometimes it's a little bit more in your face than it normally is. And I think that Henry Wise got a prerequisite
to where he's going. That was a fitting end for the crimes he committed. Henry Wise dies in a crash 11 years after he
murdered Stacey Lyn Chahorski. But "Bloodline Detectives" are able to piece together
some of the details, gruesome as they are, of Stacey's murder. And that is next.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: May 2022, Dade County, Georgia,
"Bloodline Detectives" have solved the 1988 murder of Stacey Lyn Chahorski who went
unidentified over 30 years. Her killer-- a truck driver named Henry Wise who investigators believe picked up Stacey along Interstate 59
before murdering her. Then Wise dies 11 years later. But detectives firmly believe they can now
figure out some of the details of what turns out to be a horrific crime. The working theory that I have is she
was picked up either in a truck stop somewhere either in Nashville or in Trenton or Chattanooga.
It could have been sporadic, you know? He could have just seen her at the truck stop
and picked her up or walking along the road or whatever. But there was some, even a small bit of premeditation
probably involved. BRIAN OXMAN: He picked Stacey up. He took her to a different location
where he raped and beat her up. And after the violent assault, he then made her get dressed again and put
her back into his truck. And he drove her north on Interstate 59. And while he was doing that, he formed the intent to kill her.
He stopped just north of Rising Fawn off ramp on Interstate 59. That's the place that he killed her.
And that's the place that he dumped her body over the embankment. JOE MONTGOMERY: What stood out to me
most was the manual strangulation. Because that takes a good deal of force. It's very personal.
It shows a tremendous amount of anger and a lot of force in overpowering a person to do that.
Things did not go the way he wanted them to. So he just basically took Stacey and took her life.
Just brutal. Just absolutely brutal. NANCY GRACE: In the end, Stacey Lyn Chahorski's loved ones
and family finally get the answers they so desperately sought over 30 years. EVAN STONE: I was tickled for the family,
not in a jokable sense, but a sense of relief that the family would actually know what happened.
Because I just can't imagine myself, you know, number one, of not knowing. And you don't know where your daughter's at
or you don't know where your son's at. It's just really hard. So I'm glad they got closure.
And I'm glad that the authorities never gave up. I don't believe in closure. I don't believe that you can take away
what happened to one of these families, losing their loved one or these victims.
But I do believe that justice is necessary for them to be able to move on. Justice is not for me to determine.
My task is to gather facts and present it to the people who make those determinations.
And in this case, god will make that determination. NANCY GRACE: When it comes to solving cold cases,
heartless, brutal killers like Henry Wise are no longer able to hide from their own DNA.
TIM BURKE: Multiple law enforcement agencies worked really hard for a lot of years.
It was actually led by a couple FBI personnel in Baltimore, Maryland. So it wasn't just a local case.
It was really a national case. I can't say enough about what a great job the Sheriff's Office in Dade County
did in preserving the evidence. Because that's what got us to where we were. And there's not a lot of places anymore
that preserve evidence for that long and take such great care. But I think that's what an impact
that Stacey made on them. Because they wanted to save this evidence in case we were able someday to bring leads where
we could solve that crime. So I think that was paramount in what they did in saving that evidence.
I think some people were surprised that we had held on to it this long. But really GBI is the one that held on to it.
They've got the resources of the state. And, man, I'm telling you, they're just here to help.
I have seen them out here all night long, and just not quitting, never quitting.
They had a lot of cold leads. But as technology advanced and the GBI's, you can see we're here today because they never gave up, you know?
And 38 years later, a mother's been able to bury her child in Michigan. Forensic genetic genealogy has become
a marvelous tool to identify criminal victims and perpetrators. In this case, which was the very first time
that both the perpetrator and the victim were identified in the same crime. These answers are necessary for the right story to be told
and for people to move on with their lives. And there's a ripple effect. I've met investigators.
And it's their white whale. It's something that they can't go to sleep without thinking
about every single night. Their family suffers. It truly is a blast radius that's
bigger than you can imagine. Each one of these answers helps hundreds of people.
And I can't imagine doing anything more meaningful or more impactful. JOE MONTGOMERY: I don't ever give up on these cases.
We've had four of these cold cases solved in the last four years. And it's because of the diligence of the agents
in that office, not me, that they're willing to keep pushing to keep thinking of new ways
to do things, to research and to find out where we can use science to solve these cases.
After 34 long years, the "Bloodline Detectives" and the remarkable science of investigative genetic genealogy
combined to not only track down the identity of a vicious killer, but to give back
a name and in fact an identity to a lady victim and her family who waited so long for answers.
I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us here on "Bloodline Detectives." [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
[THEME MUSIC]

Dade County, Georgia, 1988. When the unidentified remains of a young woman are discovered on the side of the highway, a thirty-year-long investigation ensues to identify both the victim and her killer.

Now in its fourth 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

The episode reveals how forensic genealogy identified Stacey Lyn Chahorski's killer, Henry Wise, after 34 years of mystery.

Key points

The Discovery of Rising Fawn Jane Doe. In December 1988, a woman's body is found beside Interstate 59, igniting a complex investigation.
The Breakthrough in Forensics. Investigative Genetic Genealogy emerges as a powerful tool for solving cold cases.
Stacey Lyn Chahorski Identified. After decades, detectives identify Rising Fawn Jane Doe as Stacey Lyn Chahorski, bringing closure to her family.
Stacey Lyn Chahorski Identified. After over 30 years, detectives finally identify Stacey Lyn Chahorski, a victim of a tragic crime.
Henry Wise Named as Killer. Detectives confirm Henry Wise as the murderer of Stacey Lyn Chahorski after decades of investigation.
The Role of DNA in Cold Cases. Investigative genetic genealogy proves crucial in solving cold cases like Stacey's murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Nobody speaks for the victim if it's not us.

Nancy Grace emphasizes the importance of justice for victims.

1:09WatchJun 2, 2024

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from True Crime Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.