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

[OMINOUS MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: The Florida Keys, 1991. A young woman last seen alive hitchhiking on Valentine's Day.
Her body discovered the next day on a deserted road. This was a perfect place where she had no place to go.
She could yellow she want, nobody would hear her, and she never had a chance. No ID is found at the crime scene.
Police give the unidentified young woman a name, "Valentine Jane Doe." Here, it happened on Valentine's Day
to a young girl, and she'd been sexually assaulted and had been strangled with the strings of her bikini top.
This is the story of how revolutionary forensic science finally identifies both the female victim and her killer after years
of frustrating police work. I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC]
February 15, 1991, the Monroe County Sheriff's Office gets an emergency call, a woman's body
discovered in the Florida Keys. VINCE WEINER: The individual that located her body, he,
at first, believed it might have been a male because she was face down. It was fairly fresh.
There was not any decomposition or anything like that that normally goes on. He went back and got another windsurfer to, I guess,
validate what he thought he saw. Back then, we didn't have cell phones. They had to run across the street
to actually call authorities to report the crime. RICK RAMSEY: You find a deceased woman, a young lady,
clearly had been attacked. So I'm sure for anybody, I don't care what your background is
that's shocking, and overwhelming, and scary, and probably, 10 different things going through your mind.
VINCE WEINER: Once major crimes enter detectives and crime scene, and the medical examiner, and those that are involved
in these kind of cases arrive, we systematically start to work the case. So that would involve, first of all,
trying to identify her is one, but also looking at what injuries she may have sustained.
What does the body look like? Is there any other objects or other pieces of evidence
within proximity to her body? We look for tire tracks, we look for shoe imprints.
The first thing they notice when they come on the scene before they see the body is they immediately
identify the telltale signs of a dragging of a body. They see drag marks, leading from the road
out into this cove area. They take note of this, and they write it down in their later reports.
When they discover the body, it's naked, it's face down, it has been clearly in a struggle.
There are telltale signs of a struggle, of a physical assault. VINCE WEINER: She did have an injury, a significant injury,
sustained to her head. There was some abrasions throughout her body. It appeared as though from the initial observations
that she had some kind of a ligature mark with a piece of clothing around her neck.
There was no bra found at the scene, so we believe she was wearing a bikini top,
and that was used as a ligature to asphyxiate her. She was somewhat in some form of a tidal pool that
was on the side of one of our trails that leads to this horseshoe. RICH ROBINSON: Her clothes are found very close to the body,
and she has a red and blue striped sweater. She has these very striking brown moccasins
that are not something that people in the Florida Keys usually wear. Typically, you're wearing either sneakers or sandals.
And then she was also wearing cutoff jean shorts as well. In a place like the Florida Keys,
where there's so little land, it's such a narrow expanse, it's very hard to hide a body.
And the perpetrator didn't try to hide it, he just discarded it so he could get away.
And he did. The victim got her name because police had theorized that she had been murdered on Valentine's Day, February 14th,
and her body was discovered the following day, on February 15. We believe her death occurred, perhaps, in the evening hours
or late hours of the 14th. So with her being unknown, it was a way to just use the holiday as a way to recognize
her or identify her. When it comes to clues about what happened, the Monroe County sheriffs are almost at ground zero.
Investigators know very little about the young murder victim. Who was she? How did she end up in this remote location?
How did she die? Was she strangled by the piece of clothing found around her neck?
Was she strangled there or dumped there? Detectives hope the autopsy will provide answers.
That's when they were really able to get a really good look at the victim and identify key physical descriptions
about her. They had determined that it was a white female. She had brown to green eyes, brown hair.
And what was also noticeable during the autopsy was that it appeared that she had stretch marks, which also
indicated that at some point she may have been pregnant and had carried a baby to full term.
They had discovered that she had two tattoos. One tattoo was of a cross. She also had a second tattoo with the word
"Love" and a heart on the back of her left shoulder. She didn't have any tan lines.
This was something that struck investigators because we're talking about Key West, Florida.
People in Key West, Florida are spending their days out in the sun, laying out at the beach,
so it was very unusual to find this female victim where she didn't have any tan lines.
There was no indication that she had spent much time in the sun. Investigators follow their suspicions
a victim in Key West without a tan line suggests she's not from around there, but guesses alone will not solve this case.
Detectives dig deeper. They focus on whether the victim was sex attacked and whether they can retrieve DNA that will identify her.
RICK RAMSEY: We'll be taking DNA samples from the victim. We'll be doing fingerprints, clippings from fingernails,
trying to get scrapings under nails, scarring, tattoos, to identify the height, weight, hair, eyes.
We'd be looking at samples from a vaginal-- for this case, we thought the victim was sexually assault. We'd
be taking a rape kit, trying to have a DNA sample from inside the victim. Her fingerprints were submitted through our AFIS
system or another database, which helps to identify those that have been fingerprinted in the past.
Those were inconclusive because, well, it's likely she was never arrested anywhere in the nation.
Her information was not populated into the system, so she did not have a fingerprint record on file.
It is very rare for investigators not to be able to determine the identity of a victim.
Usually, if it's not immediately found because of readily identifiable information on their person, a wallet,
an ID, then it can be determined through their fingerprints, or through their dental records, or through their DNA nowadays.
And if that doesn't work, then almost always there are family members or friends who are trying to find
where their loved one went. They weren't able to identify this person through any means
that they had at the time. And make it worse, it didn't seem like anyone who really loved her or knew
her was trying to find her. We don't know who she is. We don't know who to notify.
We don't know who did this. There were just so many unanswered questions surrounding this that the whole community
was just in a state of shock. Valentine Jane Doe could not be more alone in this world.
Sheriffs cannot identify her. No one seems to be looking for her. Is there a single witness that can give a tip and jump
start this investigation? That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." February 15, 1991, one day after Valentine's Day,
the naked body of a young woman found murdered in the Florida Keys. Investigators have tried everything
they know to identify her. They know from the autopsy, she was strangled with her own bikini top.
They've run her fingerprints through a national database, but come up empty. For now, police give her the name Valentine Jane Doe.
Investigators then release the information to the public, hoping and praying for a lead.
We use Crime Stoppers. We have our own lead system. A lot of these calls come in.
They all have to be investigated or vetted somehow. And so there was, yes, hundreds of leads that
were starting to come in, and each one had to be individually investigated. When police appeal to the public for help,
it can often be more of a burden than help. Hundreds of tips may pour in from very
well-intentioned people, but statistics show these tips seldom pay off, yet investigators still
search for that one good tip, while at the same time, all these tips eat up the investigators energy.
That's the way the public outreach in this case was going, until that one tip catches
the attention of investigators. A witness had approached the police and had shared with investigators
that they saw a young woman along US Highway 1 hitchhiking the night before, about 18 miles away from where the victim's
body was discovered. RICH ROBINSON: The Florida Keys are a linear strip of islands
that stretch from the Florida mainland down to Key West, and there is literally one road that connects all of that.
So when you talk about the Florida Keys in terms of where you are, in terms of geography,
the locals use something called a mile marker. That's how they determine where they are.
So the victim is seen alive on Valentine's Day in Key West itself, and she's observed to be
hitchhiking north. Investigators come across this information because they interview a ton of people.
I mean, they interview dozens and dozens of people who see her or may think that they saw, her at least.
She's seen alive later on in the day, at 6:30 at night, at Mile Marker 17, meaning that she
is 17 miles north of Key West itself, the southernmost point. So she's heading north, and she's successful in doing so.
That's the last time she's seen alive, and her body is found 20 miles away, the next day.
What happened between 6:30 on Valentine's Day and 8:15 on February 15th, we don't know.
So with her being originally identified as hitchhiking at the 15 and the 17 mile marker,
they set up road checks there to try to solicit those that are common to the area.
For instance, if you lived in that area, you would traverse in and out of that area quite a bit,
and perhaps, maybe they would get additional witnesses that may have saw her. So they were trying to get additional witnesses,
or identify additional witnesses that may have saw or, perhaps, even may have had conversation with her.
At the time of course, that led, that was unsuccessful as well. NANCY GRACE: Investigators believe this may
be a major break in the case. They hope for more witnesses and more clues, and they focus on a suspicious vehicle seen in the area.
Witnesses had informed police that an older model, white pickup truck with a camper had been seen in the area,
driving along US Highway 1 around February 14 and 15. But when the police investigated this tip
about the pickup truck, nothing really came about. People thought that maybe, you know, this was
some transient that did this. They found out that the girl was hitchhiking. She was obviously a transient as well.
People didn't know. I mean, that was the uncertainty that really kept people very
much unsettled about this case. We just didn't know who this was, who the victim was,
and who the murderer was. We just didn't know. NANCY GRACE: What do Monroe County sheriffs really
know about Valentine Jane Doe? Well, they know she's been sex assaulted and strangled dead.
They know she was last seen 18 miles from where her body is found. They also know no one is looking for her.
She's been traveling alone, so investigators reach out to the National Center for Missing
and Exploited Children. The victim's face was so badly bludgeoned that it was not something that the police wanted to release.
They released for many, many years no photos of the victim because of that. So they needed to rely on experts
in the field of facial reconstruction and animation, really, to come up with a way to release an image of the victim.
So they worked with the team at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
and they were able to piece together what they thought, a rendering of what they thought the victim looked like.
And when the forensic sketch artist generated this sketch, it was immediately circulated in the media
to try and see if anyone, anyone out there recognized this woman and might know who she was based on this sketch.
But after the sketch was released, the police didn't really receive much. They still weren't any closer to finding out who this woman was.
RICK RAMSEY: This is frustrating for them. They want to solve this crime. They want to hold someone accountable.
They want to stop potential future attacks by this person so free. They want to give closure to the family,
the family know where this person is. And when you can't solve a case like this, it wears on you.
You drag it with you each and every day, but emotionally, to see the traumatic stuff that we have to see,
to see something so heinous, know what this person went through, was brutally attacked, and assaulted,
and sexually assaulted, and murdered, you know, it's-- man, I tell you, it's hard, it's a hard day.
I know they got dozens, perhaps hundreds, of leads, and none of them panned out, but that was the only way
to find out any information back then, was to try to get the information out, see if anybody knew this person or was reported them missing.
And I know the Sheriff's Office was tireless in this because they felt the same way the community did.
They wanted to solve this. They wanted to make sure that people felt secure in their homes, that they didn't have a murderer
on the loose out there. It was just a lot of dead ends for the police department,
the sheriff's office. NANCY GRACE: The Monroe County sheriffs use every investigative technique available in 1991.
But nevertheless, the case of Valentine Jane Doe goes cold, and it will take years and brand new forensic technology
to bring this case back to life. RICH ROBINSON: For 29 years, the victim, who would become well
known in popular media as Valentine Jane Doe, would be unknown, would remain unknown, and it absolutely
nod on the Monroe Sheriff's Department, and the community in the Keys, and missing and exploited children
advocates all across the country. This was a case that really bothered them. This was an incredibly sad situation, because normally,
when you're dealing with a homicide victim, you've got a family to send that victim
to where they can conduct a proper funeral and a proper burial. But when it comes to this individual,
the police didn't know who she was. So instead of sending her body to the family,
they kept it in a vault at the morgue, until she could be identified and have her remain sent to her family.
BILL BECKER: The case had gone very cold, obviously, for decades, but it was always there for the Sheriff's Office.
They always were looking for something here. I know it bothered a lot of them. They don't like to have unsolved cases out there,
and this was one that bothered many of them for many, many years. But it just grew cold, until the detectives said,
hey, let's try DNA on this. That was a really up and coming technique for law enforcement,
to go with DNA and eventually, try to come to some conclusion as to who this was.
This was a new technique, and certainly, something that they really went for. RICH ROBINSON: And it wasn't until 2020
when advances in forensics technology gave new hope that this case could be solved.
So law enforcement agencies, including the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Monroe County,
work together with a private company in seeing if new advances in genetic technology
could bring this victim and the perpetrator to light. Next on "Bloodline Detectives,"
law enforcement joins forces with private companies to solve the case of murdered Valentine Jane Doe.
2020, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, along with Monroe County sheriffs, struggle to identify a young woman
found sex attacked and murdered, 1991. The scene of the crime, a remote area of Key West.
Investigators know the victim was last seen alive one day after Valentine's Day.
Now, 29 years later, detectives take one last shot to identify her with a brand new forensic technique--
genetic genealogy. When you don't have any new fresh leads coming in, you're often faced with a roadblock where you've
got to come up with a different strategy to try to solve the case. And in this case, that's when the use
of forensic genetic genealogy came into play. RICK RAMSEY: We talked about doing some new submissions.
We talked about new technology. The director needed me to approve it and signed it, to send it out to FDLE, and to get this done
and approve the cost, and to do it. And I was all about it because, obviously, we have
to keep up with new technology. We have to do every effort we can to solve these crimes,
identify these victims, identify suspects. The chances were lesser than good. They were less likely to be something
coming back than they were to come back with a positive hit. But hopeful, we have to be hopeful.
Each and every day, and every event we do, and every effort we make, we have to hope that something
good comes out of it. When forensic genealogy came about, they used FDLE as their conduit, to, you know--
you have a private entity trying to offer law enforcement opportunity to use their product.
So FDLE partnered with Parabon in this case, and with our approval, we're able to come up with the funds
and employ Parabon to do both suspect and victim analysis. From the crime scene, they were able to find foreign DNA,
and that DNA was from a male that they believed was responsible for her murder, so that's the DNA that
was submitted to Parabon for us to develop a SNP profile and then perform investigative genetic genealogy on.
Lori Napolitano was the former lead of the investigative genetic genealogy unit at the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement, and we work together on many cases. On this case, because it was a two-pronged approach with two
separate investigative genetic genealogy cases, she took the case and the work of trying
to identify the victim, while I focused on trying to identify her killer. This case was unique because we didn't know
the identity of the victim. So that's very unusual, to be trying to help bring justice to somebody who--
I don't even know who they are. I don't know who their family members are. I don't know who I'm trying to find answers for.
So it doesn't make it any less compelling. In fact, in some ways, it almost makes it more compelling
because we have multiple mysteries. I'm exclusively focused on trying to bring answers
and justice for that victim. I don't know her name, but I know she's Valentine Jane Doe,
and that's enough for me to really drive me to try to identify her killer. Now what's so incredible about this technology--
and this is where it really gets into science fiction, at least from my untrained eye--
investigators and researchers are able to cross-reference DNA with public accessible databases
of DNA. So these are the type of things that you and I do when we try to find out what country
are our relatives are from. All that is put in a big pool, and so they can look at that information and try to find out victims
and perpetrators of crimes. And in this case, that's exactly what they did. I was aware of where Valentine Jane Doe was found and when,
and so I knew that her killer had to be in that area at that time and of the right age
to have perpetrated this crime. From the DNA, we knew that he was male. And so I was looking for a male of the right age.
Didn't know if he was young or old, but of an age where he wasn't too young or too old to be
able to perpetrate this crime. And I knew it was somebody that had to be in the area
where she was found around the time that she was discovered. Working with the DNA of the unknown suspect,
as I do on all my cases, I create genetic networks. I compare those top matches to some of the more
distant matches and try to find clusters of matches that are sharing DNA with each other.
Then I build their trees, and I try to identify their common ancestors. If I'm successful in doing that, then I
can piece his family tree back together, piece by piece by piece. It's like a puzzle.
I have to find that one person or that set of siblings that is related to all of those top, or key,
matches. And so if we have matches that share X DNA in addition to the autosomal DNA, we know those matches
are going to connect to that male's mother's side, and so that helped me. Because typically, you don't know which side is mom's side
and which side is dad's side, and you're just moving the pieces around until they all fit,
you try to find all the descendants of a set of common ancestors. So in this case, I was able to find
that union couple between two of the genetic networks. So that is very exciting.
When those pieces start falling in place, it's a very exciting moment in my job because I know I'm heading in the right direction.
Parabon was able to identify one name as the lead suspect in this case. That was Robert Lynn Bradley.
That information was cross-referenced from DNA found at the scene, semen and other DNA
that was held by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Interestingly enough about Robert
Lynn Bradley was that he was dead, and in fact, he had been shot dead, murdered, about a year
after this killing. We do know, when we are able to identify him from Texas, at the time of his death, he had a piece of paper on him,
and that piece of paper was a receipt of where he stayed in Miami at a homeless shelter.
That document, or that receipt, is dated in November of 1990, which is about four months or so or less leading up to her case.
So we know that he is at least in Miami months prior to this case, whether he traveled up and down the Keys
or not, or he actually was in the Keys, working or not. What he was doing down here?
I have no idea. When he saw the opportunity with this case, he obviously took it.
This may have been his first one, but it also might not have been. Usually, in these kind of cases, where
these are crimes of opportunity, and deviancy, and sexual assault, this is something that may have
happened prior to and likely, possibly, unfortunately, may have happened thereafter.
I read the case and what he allegedly did in 1988 to this lady in California, and it had a lot of the same characteristics that were shown
in our case as well-- the strangulation, the abuse from a male to female, that kind of thing.
So very, very highly possible that he may have committed this crime like this, or would have continued
to commit crimes like this. This was a violent selfish act to just randomly just
rape this woman and not care about her. And the end of day was make sure that he either didn't get
caught or during the course of a struggle to subdue her, but this is a person that had no caring for this woman whatever.
She was nothing she was a piece of trash to him that he just used and discarded like garbage.
Here's a person who has a caring for nobody but himself, a person who had nothing going good for himself
in life. He bobbed around different areas, moving from here to there. And his bound history here prior and after,
being shot down, murdered and killed, tells you this was just a terrible person,
would do nothing for anybody, that he's just a low-life piece of garbage that is where he needs to be.
Now that the lab has identified a promising suspect, the first thing that investigators need to do
is to make sure that this is their guy. They need to be able to compare his DNA profile to the DNA
collected at the crime scene. That's when they realized that because he had died in 1992,
they were able to reach out to the morgue, the coroners, to obtain a sample of his DNA from his autopsy.
Luckily, they still maintain a blood stained card that was submitted by the medical examiner.
We were able to take that blood stained card that they sent to us and have that compared to the DNA sample
that we had. So FDLE crime lab went ahead and compared both samples from the DNA swab with that of the blood
card, bloodstained card that was submitted by Texas. They were able to match the DNA collected
at the crime scene to the DNA that was collected at his autopsy. And when the two samples were compared,
they came back as a match. NANCY GRACE: The identification of Valentine Jane Does killer is a huge breakthrough
for Bloodline Detectives, but that's only half the story. They're determined to give Valentine Jane
Doe her real name and restore her past life after almost 30 years. Now that investigators had identified a suspect,
the next thing that they needed to do was figure out who their victim was. And using very similar DNA testing and technology,
they were able to identify this female victim. CECE MOORE: The investigations that Lori Napolitano and I were
performing were in parallel. So she was working with the DNA matches for the unidentified victim, while I
was working with the DNA matches for the unidentified suspect. And we were off siloed doing our own thing.
And so I wasn't aware of the identity of the victim until I had identified the potential perpetrator.
Once Lori Napolitano and her team at FDLE was able to make a positive identification,
they shared with me that they believe Valentine Jane Doe was Wanda Kirkum. Something that took over 29 years
came to them in an instant. The name of the victim was Wanda D. Kirkum. Finally, after nearly three decades,
her identity was known. Nearly 30 years go by and then in a single instant, a female victim who has been so alone, without even a name, now
has a real name and a real life story to go with it. That's next on "Bloodline Detectives."
For nearly 30 years, Florida investigators called her Valentine Jane Doe, the victim of a violent sex
attack and murder in Key West. Now, they have her real name, Wanda Kirkum and the task
of locating any relatives to determine how the teen girl Wanda Kirkum ended up in Key West.
We were able to identify a family member that lived close to where we are, in Florida.
That family member was in Spring Hill, Florida. So we were able to get an interview with her,
and she certainly confirmed that, yes, she was the sister of Edith Rogers Kirkum, who had somewhat
of an estranged relationship with her sister, and eventually, recognized that her sister had left California
many, many, many years ago and moved to New York with a man, and they believed that they both had a child
by the name of Wanda Kirkum. Although Wanda's parents had already passed away, investigators were able to track down
an aunt of Wanda's, who provided investigators with a picture of Wanda. And when investigators looked at the picture
and compared it to their victim, it was a match. Who was Wanda Kirkum? Well, it turned out that she was from Western New York.
She ran away from home when she was 16 years old. Doesn't seem like she had a very good
relationship with her family. Her parents are both dead now, and there wasn't really
much family left from Wanda. And at the time of her disappearance, her family allegedly were abusive and never
even reported her missing. After the police had identified one, they were able to track down one of her cousins, a cousin that
grew up with Wanda. And investigators spoke with her to find out more about their victim Wanda.
And what the cousin had shared with investigators that there were some very serious allegations
made that Wanda's parents had been abusive towards her. So this cousin apparently, from what she said,
spent some childhood time with Wanda, growing up in upstate New York. They would occasionally have visits with family
members and whatnot. And she asserted that Wanda might have had a troubled childhood, a very dysfunctional
family with both her parents. We understood that she did run away, probably around the age
of 15 to 16 years old. And that unfortunately-- and this was also challenging to the initial detectives--
this is a child at 15 or 16 years old that was never actually reported as a missing person.
RICH ROBINSON: I think that Wanda was out along US Highway 1. I think that he came along.
He saw her hitchhiking along the side of the road. He saw his opportunity. He decided to, possibly, befriend her, offer her a ride.
Once she got into his car, that's when he assaulted her. Next on "Bloodline Detectives,"
how science and old school police work team up to finally paint a portrait of a tragic, young girl.
The science used to identify Wanda Kirkum after nearly 30 years is extraordinary.
Just as extraordinary is the teamwork between the forensic scientists at Parabon Labs
and, in this case, Florida law enforcement. Together, they complete the picture of a life cut short.
But there's so much more we don't know about her, and that's the frustrating part about this case.
She had gotten a tattoo, had the word "Love" in it and a heart, and this is a person who didn't seem to get a whole lot of love
at home, and yet she had it tattooed on her body, so she was seeking it. She had a sense of fashion, was trying to find her way in life.
She clearly needed help. She needed support. She was a very trusting person. So many people have gone to the Florida Keys
to reinvent themselves, and maybe that's what she was trying to do, too. The announcement that this case was finally solved,
that the victim had finally been identified, as well as her killer, this was huge for the community.
The community had waited years and years for this case to be solved. And finally, with the use of forensic genetic genealogy,
they finally had the answers they spent years searching for. BILL BECKER: That was some great foresight by the Monroe County
Sheriff's Office and their detectives to preserve all of that evidence, to preserve the blood evidence from both the victim
and the perpetrator, and they had no idea of knowing at the time that this evidence would
eventually lead to both the victim and the killer and their identities. There's no doubt this is 100% the reason we solved this case.
Without that, we would still have an unsolved murder, still trying to identify the victim, the suspect,
and still have a case sitting on the shelf. So there's no question that this is what broke the case.
Obviously, the hard work the men and women in the Sheriff's Office, moving forward, trying to keep up with technologies
and submissions. But in the day, without this technology, this and many other cases now in the future
would never be solved. It was a real team effort between FDLE, Parabon, and the Monroe County Sheriff's Office,
and we each played really important roles in this. It was wonderful collaborating with Lori Napolitano.
Splitting our casework the way that we did, I think it makes the work that FDLE is doing in Florida much more efficient
because we can work together. They have their strengths, we have our strengths. They have access to records, we don't.
And so I really love the partnership that we have, and I think it's a great model for the rest of the country.
I wish all 50 states had a program like Florida does. It can really help bring these cases to resolutions more
quickly and more efficiently. This was huge. You know, we were very proud of our teams.
We did press releases and made sure the media knew about it. We want to encourage other agencies to see how successful
it was for us, and maybe they have a cold case, they may try this technology. So we want to spread the good word that, look,
this is out there. We use it. It's accessible. We close this case. There's a reason to continue even 20 years later,
to work on cold cases, to try to solve these cases, that it can be solved, or even the detectives who
are no longer work here, who worked in that case years ago, can maybe feel some closure in themselves.
They held this for 20 years. These initial detectives and people then, even ones that worked on it after that,
they struggle with this that they couldn't close it, they couldn't solve it, they couldn't get closure,
they couldn't hold someone accountable. We're happy to tell those people involved.
They're excited, and so they've got a million questions, and they're just so happy because this
is the one case they couldn't close, they couldn't solve, now it's solved. So for them, it's closure.
They take these, like we said earlier, personal. They can relate to this being their daughter, their sister,
their cousin, a family relative, a friend, someone they grew up with. And this for them, I think, is just a little bit
of relief for them. While we wish that it never occurred, we wish we could have held this person accountable,
we wish you could have arrested him before he got killed and have him sit the rest of his life in life in prison.
Again, the fact that at least he was murdered a year later, at least, again, his act of terror
on women and other people has come to an end. I think it's always disturbing when somebody
dies without an identity. There is a dignity that I believe we all deserve. We all deserve to have an identification in life
and in death, to know who we are, for people to know who we are. And so it's a real indignity and injustice to me
when somebody has died, and they are listed as a Jane or John Doe. Nobody deserves that, everybody deserves an identity.
It is a silent epidemic in this country. I think people are becoming more aware of it,
but there are tens of thousands of Jane and John Doe's across the country. Investigative genetic genealogy has the capability
to bring names back to these individuals, to provide their identities, and to bring
answers to their families and loved ones about what happened to them. But we've got to work at case by case by case,
and there are a lot of cases out there. There is the real potential that we can identify all
of these people like Valentine Jane Doe, but we need the funding, we need the interest from the public
to participate, to upload their DNA, to GEDmatch and allow us to compare that against these nameless
individuals, so we can help them regain their names and their identities. The more that everyone's DNA is shared
the more cases like Wanda Kirkum's can be solved and the more a tragic young life,
lost, even to her own family, can find dignity again. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us here on "Bloodline Detectives."
[SOMBER MUSIC] [AUDIO LOGO] [THEME MUSIC]

The Florida Keys, 1991, a young woman is last seen alive hitchhiking on Valentine’s Day. The next day her body is discovered on a deserted road; she had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death. Nearly 30 years later, forensic science identifies both the victim and killer.

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.

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Brief Summary

The episode reveals how Wanda Kirkum, a murder victim from 1991, was identified through advanced forensic techniques after decades of being unknown.

Key points

The Discovery of Valentine Jane Doe. A young woman's body is found in the Florida Keys, leading to a complex investigation.
The Struggle for Identification. Investigators face challenges in identifying the victim, leading to her being named Valentine Jane Doe.
Advances in Forensic Science. Years later, new forensic techniques offer hope in solving the cold case of Valentine Jane Doe.
Identifying the Suspect. Robert Lynn Bradley is identified as the lead suspect in the case, despite being deceased.
Wanda Kirkum Identified. After nearly 30 years, investigators identify the victim as Wanda D. Kirkum.
Community Closure. The identification of the victim and suspect brings closure to the community after years of uncertainty.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She never had a chance.

Describing the victim's tragic fate.

0:31WatchMay 22, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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