The Heartbreaking Murder of Linda Slaten | Bloodline Detectives with Nancy Grace | Forensic Files

NANCY GRACE: Lakeland, Florida, September 4, 1981. 15-year-old Jeff Slaton and 12-year-old little brother Tim
awakened by police in their own home. What these two boys see next will change their lives forever.
Why is the cop in my house, waking me up? I thought, is the house on fire? I don't know what was going on.
And he kept saying, you need to go outside with your brother. I'm like, why ain't he saying my mom's name?
NANCY GRACE: Linda Slaton's murder stuns even the most hardened police investigators.
She had like a sundress on that had been pulled down, exposing her breast, and pulled
up, exposing her midsection. And she could see that she had a coat hanger wrapped around her neck.
NANCY GRACE: Lakeland Police must act quickly to catch a brutal killer while the Slaton
family wrestles with the enormity of their loss. And I would've died that night, saving my mom,
if I could have heard something. Because me and my brother was in the house, and I didn't hear nothing.
NANCY GRACE: The Slaton case goes cold for nearly 40 years. But then, a groundbreaking new investigative tool
called genetic genealogy becomes a weapon for police. Tonight, the amazing story of how science and old
school detective work, combined, solved a decades-old crime. I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives."
Lakeland, Florida, a small city located between Tampa and Orlando, a single mom Linda Slaton
and her two boys, Jeff and Tim, moved there from Alabama in 1973. On the morning of September 4, 1981,
Linda Slaton's sister Judy becomes concerned when Linda fails to show up for morning coffee.
She goes to sister Linda's home. Judy lived in the same complex, so it wasn't too far.
She just walked down there, knocked on the front door, tried to get an answer. There was no answer.
So as she was walking away, she looked back at the side of the apartment and noticed
that the screen was off of the window, which she thought was unusual. So she went over there, and then that's when she ultimately
looked in the window and saw her sister, completely unresponsive with that hanger around her neck.
And she started to scream. And her feet were dangling off the side of the bed, and she could see that she had a coat
hanger wrapped around her neck, and that she appeared to be deceased. So she ran out front, screaming for help.
And somebody called 911. I started hearing like a walkie talkie breaking up in the room, and it was a cop.
He was coming in there, and I'm sitting there, a 15-year-old kid, I'm trying to figure
out what was going on. And I asked him, what's going on? And he said, police officer.
Stay in bed. And about the third time he did that, he told me to put on some clothes and go outside.
So I put on clothes. And he made sure I went out the front door, and I remember like every cop and everybody.
So many people were around, like thousands of cops, and people, and news crews were down both sides of the street.
And my Aunt Judy was out there, crying. And she told me, my mom's been murdered.
And that's I started crying, holding her. A uniformed cop was waking me up. And then, you know, that was the first thing
that's strange to me. And why is the cop in my house waking me up? I thought, is the house on fire?
I don't know what was going on. And he kept saying, you need to go outside with your brother.
I'm like, why isn't he saying my mom's name? He just keeps saying you need to go outside with your brother.
As he opened my door, they were coming out of my mom's room, and that's when I saw the whole crime scene.
So then, I knew what happened. And then, they ultimately wanted to lock down the scene
and preserve as much evidence as possible. I think it's a very personal crime to see how closely the hanger was
tightened down around her neck. I mean, it was a very angry, to me, a very violent killing.
Well, the scene was really confined to the mother's bedroom. The screen was missing from the window.
She was small woman. She was only like 4 foot 10, so her feet weren't even touching the ground,
hanging off the end of the bed. And the hanger had been tightened down, where it was into her skin about a half an inch.
There was claw marks on her neck, where she was trying to pry the hanger loose. You see a lot of pictures.
And a lot of bad things that happen to people, but I had never seen that, where they had actually
used a coat hanger to strangle somebody and then actually sexual battery. NANCY GRACE: Police interview the family, including
Linda's sons, Tim and Jeff before the boys are taken away from the horrific crime scene.
I remember, once I got back to my grandparents' house, I swear, I cried for two weeks straight.
Because that image just kept going over in my head. You know, her, laying on the bed, partially clothed,
you know, murdered, beaten, and stabbed to death. After that happened, we was all scared to death because we
didn't know who it was. We thought it might have been somebody in the family. I remember for about a week, we all stayed in one room.
And my grandpa sat there with a loaded gun for the first week, because we was all scared to death.
We all thought, you know, he's out the middle of an orange grove in this old farmhouse.
It'd be easy for somebody to come down and kill us all. NANCY GRACE: Linda Slaton's family,
traumatized by what happened. Especially in that particular neighborhood. It was a brand new neighborhood that was slowly being built.
It wasn't all the way finished at the time of this. So there was a lot of single women, single mothers.
And I'm sure, it struck panic into that neighborhood. I'm sure that most women, when they saw it, absolutely,
I'm sure that it was a lot more people locking their doors. You know, probably back then, in '81 people didn't
lock their doors as much. I, kind of, felt this person came in through that bedroom window because there
was some shoe prints. And then, you got these coat hangers that was used, one under her, and then one around her neck
that appeared to be the same coat hangers in her closet So was this person hiding in her closet,
and then she'd come in there, and he attacked her. I was just kind of concerned that we had somebody that
wasn't going to stop at one. You know, that they had probably done some things, maybe some sexual batteries beforehand,
maybe have a serial rapist that graduated to homicide and would continue to do this.
NANCY GRACE: Police find solid leads are hard to come by, and they wrestle with the thought
that there may be a serial killer on the loose. That's next on "Bloodline Detectives."
Lakeland, Florida, September 4, 1981. Linda Slaton's sister finds Linda brutally murdered with a coat hanger
still wrapped around her neck. Police are called to the scene to discover the victim's sons,
15-year-old Jeff and little brother 12-year-old Tim still both asleep inside. They collected the footprints from the carpets
around the bed. They got fingerprints from the entry point, which was the window into the bedroom.
They also got fingerprints in the closet. The hanger was a match to the other hangers in the closet.
And then, of course, the semen, which provided the DNA sample. They took as much as they thought they could--
I mean, obviously, they wanted to take an ashtray, just in case the suspect was in there, smoking,
or left some kind of evidence. They took a glass of water. They took the sheets, her clothing.
They took hangers that were on the bed, some hangers that compared to what looked like the same exact hangers
that were used to go around her neck from her closet. They took shoes because there were shoe prints
on the bed, fingerprints. They took everything, and they did a great job of preserving that evidence.
I think there was over 150 pieces of evidence taken from the scene that time. They didn't take near the pictures that they would today,
but they took a number of pictures. And then, the detectives would start interviewing and trying
to figure out a victimology for her and who might would want to do this in the area,
and so forth, kind of, figuring out what she did the day before. NANCY GRACE: Lakeland Police secured the crime scene,
and they began to retrace the family's last evening together. I came home from school, then I went to football practice.
I got home about 8:30 that night. I got a shower, and the people that lived beside us
wanted her to come over, but I tagged along. And they was over there playing cards and watching TV.
I remember getting something to eat, and we didn't have a whole lot in the house.
And my mom had a little stew on the stove. And she wouldn't let me have any of it.
And there was other stuff to eat in the house, but it wasn't what I want. I was a typical 15-year-old kid, so I got pissed off,
and I took my bicycle and road to the north side of town, to my grandma and grandpa's house, to get something to eat.
The information that the original detectives were getting was Jeff and his mother actually got into an argument
that night before all this happened, to the point that she told him to leave. And he jumped on his bicycle and left and went
to his grandparents' house, and hung out with them for several hours. And then, they brought him back home
around 9:15-9:30 that night. So, obviously, there's some things going on. She's been telling friends and neighbors
that her and Jeff's having some issues, and she just don't know what to do. And he's 15 years old, and he's being a teenager, you know?
And I'm sure he's might be a handful to her, you know? Just because of those kind of things being said,
you got to look at them, you know? The doors are locked. I mean, obviously, this window is open, but you know,
could have something happen that Jeff did something? You don't know until you find out,
until you ask and follow through with it. NANCY GRACE: Investigators wait for the results
of Linda Slaton's autopsy. There was claw marks where you could see she was pulling at the hanger,
obviously, when she was losing her breath. And she just tried clawing it off. And so, there was-- her fingernails were just
scraped her skin pretty deep. It was homicide. And then, it was by strangulation
with the wire hanger. They document the injuries. They look for any other forensic evidence.
Obviously, they do a rape kit on this particular case, took fingernail clippings, which is pretty standard in homicide.
I remember being down at the funeral home for her funeral. And me, and my grandma, my grandpa, and my brother
was looking at my mom in the casket. And you could see where she was just clawing at her neck,
trying to get this coat hanger off her neck. They tried to make it up and cover it up,
but you could see where she was just clawing, trying to get that thing off her neck
while she was getting murdered. And that just burned in my mind this whole time.
In 1981, forensic science is not readily available as an investigative tool. Eventually, a DNA sample from Linda's body
will become a crucial element in this case. But for now, investigators using old fashioned police
work to narrow down a suspect list. They ultimately wanted to speak to anybody that
would have been close or, maybe, had some kind of motive with Linda. They spoke to her ex-boyfriend that she broke up with a couple
of days prior, just to, kind of, get his alibi and make sure that he didn't do it.
They spoke to the ex-husbands. You know, because there was one of their ex-husbands
that had a very toxic relationship with her, where it was a physical abusive relationship.
So they wanted to make sure that they had all that path cleared up, as far as, you know, they had an alibi,
rolling them out with DNA at that point in time. And then, if they would consent to polygraphs back then.
They interviewed the neighbors. There was a little get together at the next door
neighbor's house. Linda and Tim had been at that gathering. So, obviously, they wanted to look at all the people
that were at that gathering. They did test all those men, but there was no evidence
that there was any flirting or anything like that going on during that get together.
Sometimes, they come get me from the farmhouse. Most of the time, they get me out of school.
And they'd come and get me, interrogate me all the time, having me on lie detector test, or polygraph,
or whatever. They want to put me under hypnosis and stuff, and that part was hard.
They came down here to get me another time, and my grandma and grandpa, they lied into these two cops
and told them to get out and leave his family alone. Get out and find out who murdered my daughter.
I mean, they had a little bit more colorful language, and I never heard them cuss.
But after my grandma my grandpa got into them, they'd never come harass me no more.
It was bad. One time, the one cop, Detective Williams, he was a bigger, heavier set cop.
He was talking about, Jeff, you're a big, strong, young man. You've got big arms on you and strong enough to put your hands
around your mom's neck and murder her. Cops said that to me. I'm just the 15-year-old kid, hurt, and lost my mom.
And that would always hurt. I came so close to hitting him in the head as hard as I could,
but I didn't. I can understand because, ultimately, we wanted to be able to know who the killer was.
You can't just focus on one person, you know? I don't think that they focused specifically on Jeff.
They were just trying to make sure that they dotted all their I's and cross all their T's, ruling
him out. And him being a typical teenage boy, having an argument with his mom, he was there
in the house that's something that that's what investigators do is, they try to get interview to the point
where they can rule them out as a suspect. Shortly after, the cops were taking me out of school
all the time. I'd wind up dropping out, quit. And I was getting so embarrassed. I was getting taken out of school all the time.
And I was already struggling enough. My mom got murdered, and I was already having
a hard enough time in school. And I wound up dropping out. There's a couple of times I thought about committing
suicide because I didn't know who murdered my mom, what was going on, and got into drugs, and drinking
bad, and working some little jobs, work in a packing house. I remember one week, working 129 and 1/2 hours there.
That's a lot of hours for a 15-year-old kid to do. I was partying one night, doing whiskey,
and drinking, and marijuana. And I thought I was going to die. I started getting sick, and I couldn't get sick no more.
And I thought I was dying. I must have had alcohol poisoning. I asked the God. I said, God, you let me live.
I knocked this mess off, and I did. My kids have never seen me drinking or nothing.
My Katie, she's 21. And my Brian's 18. NANCY GRACE: Police collide into one dead end after another.
When I started in '98 looking at it, and we started sending stuff off for DNA. We ended up getting a DNA profile.
So that was huge. And then, of course, you want it entered into the national database to compare to anybody
else that's in the database. And we weren't getting any hits. We had some latent prints that were lifted in the crime scene.
That was being compared to AFIS, you know, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
We weren't having any luck hitting on the DNA or the fingerprints. We had a lot of unidentified prints.
That was something else that we were doing. We were trying to get fingerprints from people
and and DNA from them. NANCY GRACE: Linda Slaton's case goes cold. As we see next on "Bloodline Detectives,"
it will be 38 long years before investigators get a chance to solve it. Lakeland, Florida, September 4, 1981, Linda Slaton,
a single mom of two boys, brutally murdered in the family home, strangled by a metal coat hanger.
Police are called to the scene to discover Linda's sons Jeff and Tim are still both sound asleep in the home.
The investigation goes cold. But then, in 2001, 20 years after Linda Slaton's death,
detective Brad Grice reopens the case. My biggest thing was to eliminate the original suspects, you know, the boyfriend, anybody that
was brought up that was suspicious out in that neighborhood during that time frame.
This particular day, Tim and Jeff Slaton walks into the criminal investigations division.
And when I greet them, I realized that I had known Jeff for several years and didn't know his last name,
and I never put two and two together reading this report. He recognized me. I recognized him, which made things a little bit easier.
Any time that he wanted to call, or any time that he wanted to come down, that I was
willing to sit down with him. I may have some information, or I may not. But him, knowing that somebody is looking
at his mother's case 20 years later, I think was just huge for him and Tim. And all the ones that have worked on it,
we really got close to him for for a long time. And we'd always go down and talk to him.
He would talk to us all the time. He really, really wanted to solve the case. I only had one son.
I named my son Brad after Brad Grice. But then, I got to how much he wanted to resolve my mom's case, who murdered my mama, you know?
NANCY GRACE: Linda Slaton's own sons, Jeff and Tim, helped detective Grice ID possible suspects
from 20 years ago. They know about DNA, and they know how strong that is because I was telling them.
We've already sent a bunch of stuff off, and a lot of these people have been eliminated.
Well, then, they start providing me with names of people that, hey, you know, have you looked at so-and-so?
His brother was a friend of ours back then, and maybe you want to look at him. And so, we would track them down if we could and get their DNA.
And so, it was a continual thing over the next several years. NANCY GRACE: The friendship between Linda
Slaton's son Jeff and Detective Brad Grice builds over the years. But now, Jeff faces a growing fear that his mother's killer
will not be identified before Brad retires from the police force. He asked me to please not retire
until I was able to solve his mother's case. Over the years, it just tore him and Tim up, not knowing
know who killed their mother. He was so afraid that he knew the person that killed
his mother, that he might have sat across the table from this person that killed his mother.
And for him to not know that and not know who that person was, I think, driving him crazy.
That's bothered my whole life being scared to death, always looking over my shoulder, and thinking
it was somebody I know. And I slept with a switchblade knife stuck in the wall or my pillow.
Today, I have a loaded gun by me every night when I go to sleep. I got an alarm system on my house and cameras,
all because of this dirt bag. If anybody ever come to my house, they won't walk back out, I can promise you that.
Because I usually have two guns next to me at nighttime when I'm sleeping. There are certain cases that you take home after you retire.
This was definitely one of them. It hurt me to leave. I didn't want the case to die.
I was afraid that it was just going to get put back on a shelf, and it didn't. Thank God, it didn't.
Brad Grice works the case right up until his retirement day, and then hands it over to fellow detective Tammy Hathcock
and her team in 2018. They pursued the possibility of using a new forensic tool--
investigative genetic genealogy. About 2018 is when we got a phone call from Florida
Department of Law Enforcement, and they were, kind of, talking about this new technology,
this genetic genealogy. And we had already seen that in the news, and we had, kind of, actually learned
a little bit about that in some classes that we were taking. So we were, kind of, already on that path,
but it was the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that, kind of, just pushed us to say,
you know, this is probably the best way to go. And so, ultimately, that's when we
submitted some of the subsamples of the DNA to them. Once it's uploaded to the databases I have access to,
I receive a list of matches. That's a list of people who share what we consider significant amounts of DNA
with our unknown suspect. All we have is a name, and it could be an alias. It could be initials.
It could be a very common name, and I have to figure out who that person is. I need to get their tree to the level, where
I can start connecting into the traditional genealogical records. To do that, I often have to use social media,
people search databases, newspaper archives, obituaries, if I can find one naming that match.
Fortunately, in this case, the very top match had an extremely unique name. I think she's the only person in the United States
with that name. So I was able to quickly identify her. NANCY GRACE: At first, CeCe Moore and her team at Parabon
Nanolabs seem close to cracking the case, but then, they hit a roadblock. Unfortunately learned that she does not
know the identity of her biological father or her maternal grandfather. That meant we only had one quarter
of her biological family tree. Someone's DNA means absolutely nothing to me, if I can't marry that with their biological family.
I already don't know who this killer is, and I rely on being able to build the family
trees of those sharing DNA with him in order to reverse engineer his identity. Once I set that match aside, I was dealing with a much more
typical case, where we have multiple cousins around the third cousin level, maybe second cousin
once removed level. Of those matches, I was able to build three separate genetic networks.
Now, genetic networks are clusters or grouping of matches, who all share a common ancestral line.
So it's not just important who is sharing DNA with our suspect, but who on that list
also shares DNA with each other. And so, I was able to take several of those matches,
and build their trees, and find their common ancestors. NANCY GRACE: So often, the process of forensic science
is like taking two giant steps forward and then one giant step back. And that's how it is for the team at Parabon Nanolabs,
until they make a remarkable breakthrough. I remember it, literally, like it was yesterday.
Obviously, we had to meet in the conference room. A lot of people were there during that conference call.
They talked about it. It's like an investigative lead is what we would call it as detectives.
Well, there was only one man that was related to all of those top matches that I was able to build trees for
and descended from all three genetic networks, and that was a man named Joseph Mills, who actually
lived in that neighborhood. I remember going back through the file, seeing his name in there.
And I took that piece of paper, and I ran down the hallway to my supervisor. I don't know if you could picture me.
I'm wearing dress clothes and heels, and I'm running down there with this piece of paper
saying, oh, my God. Oh, my God. We interviewed him. We interviewed him back in 1981.
So it wasn't like just a random suspect. It was somebody that had been interviewed back in the day
and that had some, kind of, close relationship with the family. NANCY GRACE: Joseph Mills was actually
interviewed at the time of Linda Slaton's murder. He's well known to the family.
And at the time of the murder, he was trusted as a friend and authority figure. Joseph Mills was the football coach of Linda
Slaton's younger son Tim. It was him and another assistant coach, and they would give me rides.
Because after my mom was killed, and my aunt had two little kids, and my grandparents would take care of the farm,
they would offer to give me rides back and forth to practice twice a week and the games on Saturdays.
And so, she was killed on September 4. And football back then, last until, like, in November.
So I mean, I was in the car with this man several times after the fact and never had a clue.
NANCY GRACE: CeCe Moore and her team at Parabon NanoLabs gave police a name-- Joseph Mills and a possible genetic
link to the murder scene. Mills becomes the prime suspect for Linda Slaton's murder.
At that time, I got to get a strategy together to be able to confirm that this is the guy that
contributed the DNA. At that point in time, I was an investigative lead. But we still had to have that 100% of getting
his DNA to compare it to the DNA that was found inside the victim. The "Bloodline Detectives" getting
very close to identifying Linda Slaton's killer. They still have to match the suspect's
DNA to the crime scene. And then, they've got to find him. That's next on "Bloodline Detectives."
Lakeland, Florida, September 4, 1981. Linda Slaton's sister Judy finds Linda brutally murdered with a coat hanger
still wrapped around her neck. Police are called to the scene. They discovered Linda's sons, Jeff and Tim,
are both still sound asleep in the home. Leads go nowhere. The case goes cold. But now, almost 40 years later, investigators
have a suspect, whose DNA is linked to the crime scene. The suspect is Linda Slaton's son's
football coach, Joseph Mills. In '81 he was just interviewed, basically, because Timmy had actually talked about how he had gotten
home from football practice, that his football coach Joe had dropped him off. What he said, at that point in time,
was that he just spoke to her out in the parking lot. She had come up to the car and said,
how did he do in practice? And it was just a very small conversation, and that he
had never really gone in there. NANCY GRACE: Genetic genealogy clearly identifies the old football coach, Joseph Mills,
as a suspect. But for definitive proof, s detectives still need to secure a DNA sample from Mills.
Once we got his name, we submitted the fingerprints to be comparison because we found that
he had been arrested in '84. Those weren't of AFIS quality, so they had to do it by hand
to compare the fingerprints between the ones that we collected from the scene and then, also,
Joseph Mills at the time. And then, they were able to say that, yes, his fingerprints were there on the scene, on the windowsill,
on the window. So that was, again, another piece of the evidence that we had to be able to say, all right,
we're on the right path. While we're doing that, that's when we started surveilling him, following him
around to get discarded stuff. We looked his Facebook up. We followed him around continuously
to try to get him just to discard any kind of DNA. They were doing trash runs. They were trying to watching to see if he would drop something
through the trash run. I believe they actually found something that they were able to get his DNA from,
which, once it matched, then they were able to get probable cause for an actual search warrant to, actually,
physically get his DNA to confirm all that. I'm digging through this trash can like I'm on a mission.
And as soon as I know that that's the bag that I know that belongs to him, because I got some mail in it,
I ultimately, obviously, started concentrating even more on trying to find something that we could test for a DNA match,
and I found it. We found two colostomy bags. And the reason we knew he had a colostomy bag
is, we do, obviously, look in social media, and we were able to find that he had
a social media post on Facebook of him having a colostomy bag. So I knew that that was his.
So at that point in time, I drove it over to Tampa, and I didn't want to wait any longer.
I wanted to get that 100% confirmation. NANCY GRACE: A few weeks later, Lakeland police detective Tammy
Hathcocks gets the call from the lab in Tampa, the call that she's been waiting for.
I remember, she called me on my birthday. And she said, I've got a birthday present for you.
And I said, what's that? And she gave me that verbal confirmation that that was the contributor of the DNA
that was taken from the sexual assault kit for Linda. I was super excited because I knew that we were so close.
We were so close to being able to give that news to the boys. The state attorney had reached out to me.
They felt it would be good to have me present with Jeff and Tim when they talked to him, to tell them
that they had something going. They couldn't tell him who the person was. We didn't let them know, and that was probably
one of the tougher things is to actually interview them without letting them we knew who it was.
So we just locked them into a story, making sure that they remembered everything that they told
the detectives back in 1981. We sat down with the state attorney's office. We'd strategize, like what would be the questions
that we needed to ask him. We wanted to do just a very soft, non-custodial just talk
with him. Just to see if he remembers anything. So at that point in time, we did.
We went and met with him on December 4. NANCY GRACE: Police and forensic science
have combined to identify Linda Slaton's killer, nearly 40 years later. Next, the "Bloodline Detectives" must confront the suspect they
are certain is Linda's killer. Lakeland, Florida, 2019, police desperately want to question Joseph Mills for the 1981 murder
of single mom Linda Slaton. Mills is ID'd after police utilize the science of genetic genealogy.
Mills was also Linda Slaton's son's football coach. We wanted to get a statement from him,
so we decided to go to his house and knock on his door and see if he would stick to his original statement, which
was he's never been to the house, never been inside. And it was, kind of, odd because he invited us in,
and we talked to him. Initially, he was like, I don't know what homicide you're talking about.
And obviously, I felt that to be odd because I think that would be a significant event in your life
that you wouldn't forget. But then, when we showed him pictures of Linda Slaton and Timmy, he remembered, and he did stick
to his original statement, that he didn't know her, never been in the house. At that point in time, it didn't seem like he felt like he
had anything to worry about. I had to go testify in front of the grand jury, but there was a warrant issued for him at that point in time.
So we actually went back out there, and we arrested him, and transported him back to the police department to do
the more custodial interview. He didn't try to resist. He was actually just very calm and didn't really ask a lot
about, like, what's going on? I mean, he asked what the warrant was for. It was a weird conversation.
You know, I sat in the back seat with him. I just had to have, like, a normal conversation,
but it wasn't like he was acting like he was upset or trying to resist. He was just almost like he was along for a ride.
We just started questioning him. And he, again, pretended like he's never been there,
didn't know her, and all that. And then, when we confronted him with the evidence, he said,
he didn't really understand the genealogy DNA aspect of it. So we tried to clarify that for him
and explained to him that we know he was in there. So he can either stick to the story,
or he can tell us the truth. And that's when he changed it and said that she invited
him over for consensual sex. We never brought up the hanger. He actually brought that up in the interview.
He explained to us that she had the hanger already around his neck, when she invited him through the window.
We confronted it him on it. And he, kind of, stuck to it. He was basically trying to put the blame on her.
We did get him to admit that he tightened it down at her request until she lost consciousness,
and then he left. NANCY GRACE: Nearly 40 years and thousands of hours of painstaking police work have passed.
Finally, investigators charged the old football coach, Joseph Mills, with the murder
a single mom Linda Slaton. I wanted him to go on trial and go for the death penalty.
That's what I wanted. And you know, he chickened out again, you know? I think that whenever he saw everything
that we had against him, he wasn't going to win that battle. He wasn't going to win that trial.
He was going to, ultimately, be found guilty. And that's the reason why he ultimately chose to plea.
I think this is a good outcome that he would plea to this, get life in prison. He'll never get out and hurt anybody else.
I'm sure Jeff and Tim, certainly, would have liked to have seen that. It would have never happened.
You would have never got to see him executed anyhow. I think this was a good call.
NANCY GRACE: Joseph Mills pleads guilty. But Linda's son, Jeff, still feels his mother's
killer has escaped justice. I ain't thought about killing him then because I'm sitting there, they had two bailiffs,
and there are two cops. And the bigger one was in the back with the prisoners in the back, and there's other ones.
It looks like-- it looked like Barney Fife from the "Andy Griffith Show." I said, I could knock him over, take his gun,
and I could blow this guy's head off. And it'd been over in a second. But it was like my mom put her hands down on me
and said, no, boy, you can sit right here, you know? One of the many sinister aspects of this case
is the fact that the football coach, Mills, continues to take little Tim to football practice for months
after he murdered the boy's mother. That's very disturbing. I just-- it makes you sick to think of that.
How does Tim feel? This guy actually drove him to football practice and back, even after he had committed such a crime.
It's just unbelievable. NANCY GRACE: Jeff Slaton is left to reflect on what he would say to his mother.
If only he could speak to her today. I'll tell her love her and hug her back and tell her I was sorry I didn't hear her that night.
Because I would have died that night, saving my mom if I could have heard something.
Because me and my brother was in the house, and I didn't hear nothing. Tell her I was sorry I didn't hear nothing to save her,
so I will save her that night. NANCY GRACE: The investigative team emphasizes just how
vital the use of genetic genealogy was in solving this cold case. It's been solving so many cases
and helping these cases get closure, and that's what cold case detectives, that's what we do.
That's what we want to make sure that we have. If it weren't for Mr. Pciket-- he's still alive today.
He's a 95, 96-year-old man that still lives in Lakeland. If it wasn't for him, none of this would have been possible.
He went in there and collected all this DNA before they really knew what DNA was about.
But he knew if he collected it, maybe, one day, you know, it would get solved. So thank God, this man did his job right that day, you know?
He didn't go in with that attitude, like a lot of people do in their jobs. He went in there, and he did his job right.
He did it well, and they preserved all that evidence. If I can tell anybody out there that has a loved
one that was murdered, even 30, 40 years ago, there's still hope. This is the perfect case to show you that there is still hope.
Hope, that's what the amazing science of genetic genealogy brings to so many families,
like single mom Linda Slaton's. Hope, that a killer, even after 40 years, can be found.
Hope, that not only crime suspects, but thousands of other people who have gone nameless
may, someday, be given their name again. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us here on "Bloodline Detectives."

Lakeland, Florida, 1981, Linda Slaten is sexually assaulted and murdered in her apartment while her two children sleep under the same roof, unaware of the grisly crime. The case goes cold but her sons never give up hope that one day, their mother’s killer will face justice. 38 years later, forensic genetic genealogy reveals a shocking truth that no one expected. Now in its third season, Bloodline Detectives is the leading true crime series that explores how police departments harness genetic genealogy to solve crimes that were once considered "unsolvable," bringing long-awaited answers to victims' families.

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

Brief Summary

Linda Slaton's murder in 1981 is solved 40 years later through genetic genealogy, identifying her sons' football coach as the killer.

Key points

Linda Slaton's Murder. Linda Slaton is found brutally murdered in her home, shocking her family and community.
A Cold Case for Decades. The Slaton case goes cold for nearly 40 years until new technology revives it.
The Role of Genetic Genealogy. A groundbreaking investigative tool called genetic genealogy becomes a weapon for police.
The Impact on the Family. The Slaton family is traumatized by the murder, fearing for their safety in the neighborhood.
Detective Grice's Commitment. Detective Brad Grice dedicates himself to solving Linda Slaton's case before retirement.
Joseph Mills Identified as Suspect. Genetic genealogy leads investigators to Joseph Mills, the football coach linked to Linda Slaton's murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I would've died that night, saving my mom, if I could have heard something.

Jeff Slaton reflecting on the night of his mother's murder.

1:08WatchApr 3, 2023

Tension

85/ 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.