Forensic Files (HD) - Season 13, Episode 38 - Cold Feet - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[Music] up next the murder of a convenience store employee goes unsolved for years the case always
bugged me we wanted to find the clown that did that police couldn't understand why the
victim's husband didn't report her missing every time i hear them i didn't call it
in because we had an argument i always wondered how can anyone believe this could new forensic testing solve
a 20 year old case you got to treat every single case like it's the crime of the
century [Music] [Music] when rod and julie este started their life together in jacksonville florida
as husband and wife they had to figure out like most couples how to support themselves rod drove a
truck for a plastics company but the only job 21 year old julie could find was working the late shift at a
convenience store near their home she had graduated from high school but she was a recent transplant to the
jacksonville area and needed that job to put food on her table convenience stores and gas
stations were really the only things at night that were open that people would rob i imagine sitting in
that convenience store without any kind of modern day surveillance or protection or panic button that
she must have been fearful julie normally worked afternoons and evenings and closed the store
at 11 pm but one night a customer noticed the store was closed at 10 30 a half hour earlier than the closing
time posted on the door police were asked to check it out we shined our lights in the windows
there was absolutely no signs of foul play nothing was disrupted nothing was overturned it just looked
like somebody left the store so we went back to work and went about our normal shift
the next morning the daytime clerk opened the store and discovered it had been robbed the
floor safe had been open and appeared to be empty and and that the power appeared to have
been cut off the night before according to the owners around 500 was missing from the safe
police tried to find julie but she wasn't home surprisingly julie's husband said she
never came home from work and he admitted he hadn't reported her missing he told
me at that time that they had had a small argument before she left for work and i'm like well you didn't call the
police when she didn't come home for you know eight hours every time i hear that story of somebody
saying well i didn't call it in because we had an argument i always wondered how can anyone believe this later that
morning four miles from the convenience store police found julie's car in the woods stuck in mud the key was
still in the ignition one of our helicopters spotted blue camaro not a long distance away but in a
wooded area that's known for vehicles dumped or parked or whatever out there they saw what they perceived to be drag
marks leading away from the vehicle and then they followed the drag marks a few hundred feet from the car under
some cardboard was julie's body julie's body was found with her arms tied behind her back with her very own
shoelaces her shirt was pulled up with her breasts exposed her pants and panties were
pulled down to her socks the details of the crime just really go right through you
they make you realize how you know how much she really went through there was a 21 year old woman who on one
hand wore a high school class ring on the other one her wedding ring julie's husband said he had an alibi
one police had heard dozens of times over the years rod estes had explained that he was by
himself all evening had watched a football game and had fallen asleep and no one was with him all night not
the best alibi in the world if a policeman thinks you might be responsible for your wife's
disappearance but that's all he had and investigators had another problem they suspected
julie had been murdered elsewhere as investigators search for julieste's killer they began by looking for clues inside
her car which was found stuck in mud in the woods near her body and the evidence told a story
julie herself was a tall girl she was approximately five eight five nine the seat had been moved
all the way up as if a shorter person had been driving it and so it was apparent that someone
other than julie had been the last person to drive that car and in fact that that person probably
was shorter and they also found blood drops in the trunk tests showed it was the same blood type
as julie's an indication she was injured elsewhere placed in the trunk then driven to the woods initially they
weren't sure whether that was the scene of the murder or that was simply a dump site that type
of development makes investigation that much more difficult because now you've got two crime scenes
to worry about unfortunately there were no foreign fingerprints found on or in the car and investigators found
no usable footprints in the mud and dirt julie's purse was discovered at the scene with no money inside
the convenience store's money bag was there but it too was empty julie's killer had removed the laces from her shoes to
tie her hands but her shoes were missing julie's shoes were distinctive even back in 1985 because they were
purple the next day investigators got a potential lead police got a call from a man who had
been kind of scrounging around behind another convenience store when he came upon a purple pair of shoes
the purple shoes were almost certainly julie's the laces were missing a bowling bag and some receipts with julie's name
left no doubt the items were hers the site was just a half mile from the convenience store where julie
was last seen alive we found evidence that things were taken out of the trunk of
her car she was probably forced into the trunk then she was driven five or six miles away
from there where her body was found normally the evidentiary value of the items would
be significant but not this time the civilian that had found those items had at first
taken them home this meant all the evidence at what may have been the murder site was compromised
somebody's been there moving things around and it just makes the investigation a lot more difficult there
was no physical evidence that at that particular time that could identify a killer
in the meantime it didn't take long for investigators to eliminate julie's husband
as a suspect when he was perfectly willing to take a polygraph examination kept in contact
with the officers trying to work this case i think all suspicion was erased but julie's autopsy did provide some
important information about the killer the medical examiner found evidence of sexual assault
a rape test kit recovered biological evidence presumably of the perpetrator unfortunately dna
testing wasn't yet available crimes in 1985 were a lot harder to solve just based on technology
they're just certain things that we could yield dna profiles from today you wouldn't be able to get back then as
the weeks went by and the number of leads started to dwindle investigators continued to search for
julie's killer knowing full well they had no forensic evidence to identify him but it didn't stop them from trying
at this particular time when this incident occurred some weird things were happening in that
area seven months before julie's murder the body of a missing 15-year-old girl was discovered just three miles away
her body was so badly decomposed the cause of death couldn't be determined and two months before julie's murder a
ten-year-old girl was found dead hanging in a tree in the woods just two miles from julie's convenience
store since these crimes happened within a radius of only three miles investigators had a hunch
they might be connected we really wanted to find the clown that did that investigators wondered whether
julieste's murder might be connected to several other crimes committed in the area
unfortunately investigators had no evidence to link them right now by today's standard physical
evidence is one of your your top factors in reviewing a case it's very significant very important
they make the case with no leads no evidence and no suspects the trail of juliet's killer
turned cold julie's family started to believe her murder would never be solved after a couple of years i just gave up i
said well we're up here and they're down there and you know nobody cares the case always bugged me you know
she went missing on my watch [Music] and it bugged me i mean every time i drove by that store i thought of her
and it bugged me after a few years patrolman frank mccasey was promoted to chief of detectives
with the power to recommend cases to the cold case unit mccasey had always had a strong desire
to solve this case this is a case that had stuck with him and stuck in his mind through his whole career so when
the cold case unit got involved they broadened their search they looked at every sexually motivated crime in the
region and got a break just two months after julius d's murder 30 miles away in another jurisdiction
there had been another convenience store crime almost identical to julie's except
in this case the victim survived a 19 year old convenience store worker carla nobles had just closed the store and
given a ride to a young man she met in the parking lot she voluntarily let him in the car
having no idea what he was capable of she did a quick drive to the post office where he said he wanted to go
before they got there the man pulled a knife [Music] forced her to drive to an isolated field
and sexually assaulted her he then forced her to drive away she was sure he was going to kill her
because she could identify him but then she saw the only chance to escape a police officer directing traffic
what are you doing [Music] she just literally tries to run up there and get the officer's attention
practically hitting the officer when he got to the car the abductor had a knife to carla's throat and so he pulled
his revolver and the abductor dropped the knife the man was identified as james ellman he was convicted for the
crime and was currently serving a 22-year sentence in a nearby prison and cold case
investigators learned another startling coincidence ellman had a close connection to the ten-year-old girl
found hanging in the tree near julie's store two months before julie's murder the ten-year-old was a half-sister of
elman investigators now wanted to test the biological evidence collected from julie's rape test kit to see
whether james ellmann was her killer but there was a risk the test would consume all of the
evidence unfortunately sometimes you have to make a choice you might have to run the
entire bit of sample but at the time you're thinking this is the best technology available
investigators decided the gamble was worth it they consumed all of the semen that was contained in
those slides trying to get results results that unfortunately never showed who the killer was
this was a devastating setback it's just shocking it feels like you're hit with a
ton of bricks then you've got to start over it's like going starting from scratch again but
investigators refused to give up ellman has a rough history and people around james ellen tend to
die unfortunately if elman was julie's killer there was no longer any dna to prove it
they used up all the evidence and and found nothing uh that that brought them any closer to
a suspect after years of searching for julie este's killer investigators were convinced they found
him he was serving time in prison for a similar crime committed 30 miles away [Music]
his name was james ellman ellman was the worst of the worst we talk about he's the poster child of
eddie social it's a clue when the public defenders are afraid of him when the doctors are afraid of him when
the people at the medical treatment facility are afraid of him but investigators wanted to be sure
ellman was responsible for julie este's murder why because if he wasn't julie's killer was still on the loose
no it's not always a hollywood ending sometimes you don't get any results cases still go unsolved so 16 years
after julie's murder the jacksonville police department sent julie's clothes to the u.s army crime
lab in forest park georgia one of the most sophisticated labs available the items evidence included socks and
her shirt and jeans as well as other items from her sexual assault kit which included like fingernail scrapings
and other swabs scientists there were discouraged all but one of the items had been analyzed and
tested the socks had never been tested probably because nobody expected to find anything
useful on them the idea that forensic evidence could have transferred onto julie's socks
was remote nevertheless analyst brian higgins examined the socks with light sources that cause
genetic material to fluoresce i was kind of like wow you know could these be actually semen
stains i was kind of surprised actually because it's not one of the more common places
we would find semen the areas were removed then analyzed with the new dna test that needed
only a very small amount of genetic material when dna first started out you needed a
lot of dna and they needed to be high quality dna nowadays it can be very degraded
and we could have very limited quantities and still yield good results miraculously the test generated a
mixture of two dna profiles one female and one male one was julie's dna the other
was the dna of the killer they were able to identify that dna profile as the exact match
to james ellman we were all ecstatic i mean it was unbelievable feeling and you know that's
that's the reward of cold case when you have that piece that you never had before
and you're able just to put that one thing together and you know you've got the entire case
investigators confronted elman in prison with the evidence and i'm telling you that your dna is in
the murder scene of this this this this murdered girl i'm telling you i wasn't there i don't
know anything about this girl if you're not there how do you how does jen how does james helman seem to get in
to get in the damn crime scene [Music] is a monster that now sits behind bars i always knew that there was going to be
a day that they were going to say we got it this case is solved based on the dna
evidence prosecutors believe james ellman was probably walking by the convenience store where julie estes
worked around 10 30 and noticed there were no customers inside he shut off the store's electricity
held juliet knife point forced her to open the safe then he made her drive a half mile away
to an area behind an unoccupied store he used her shoelaces to tie her wrists then raped and killed her
he removed items from julie's trunk to make room for her body elman drove to the woods where he hid
her body under some cardboard the biological evidence from the attack was embedded in her cotton socks
elman probably wanted to keep julie's car but it got stuck in the mud and he had
to escape on foot authorities had plenty of suspicion but no evidence to charge element with his
half-sister's murder but after 17 years there was plenty of dna evidence to charge him with julie
estes rape and murder it just was unbelievable that it would be the socks that would
hold the true identity of her killer and how would you want me to say what you really want me to say i guess i
just asked for an explanation i mean you know how forensics works i can't give it to you
well the only reasonable explanation is that you're involved in the murder no that's not true
that's not true that's definitely not true faced with a possible death penalty ellman decided to plead no
contest to julie este's rape and murder in return he was sentenced to life in prison
with no possibility of parole the lesson for criminals would be no matter how long ago you did
the crime the forensic has a capability of solving it if it wasn't for forensics in this case
i you know the dna and everything i i don't think that they would ever solve it we always talked about if we ever got
out we were just going to have to we'd be counting bodies he was we believed he was that bad you
got to treat every single case like it's the crime of the century and what i mean by that is you got to
make sure that you you don't take any evidence for granted

James Kenneth Elmen Jr. abducted Julie Estes, then 21, from the Southside convenience store where she worked in 1985. He raped and murdered her. Her body was found the next day, but the killing went unsolved until 2003.

Brief Summary

The murder of Julie Estes was solved 17 years later through DNA evidence linking James Ellman to the crime.

Key points

The Unsolved Murder of Julie Estes. Julie Estes, a convenience store employee, goes missing and is later found murdered. Investigators struggle to find her killer for years.
Breakthrough in Forensics. Years later, DNA evidence from Julie's socks leads to the identification of her killer, James Ellman.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

The case always bugged me, you know?

Reflecting on the unresolved case.

10:19WatchMar 5, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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