The Murder of 16-Year-Old Krisann Baxter | Bloodline Detectives with Nancy Grace | Forensic Files

[OMINOUS MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Spokane, Washington, October 4, 1978-- two utility workers are shocked to discover the partially
nude body of a young teen girl. She had severe bruising over her body and she was asphyxiated by her own clothes.
She had some defensive wounds. It was clear that she put up what fight she could.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The young victim is identified as 16-year-old Krisann Baxter.
She's a runaway. Krisann's case goes cold, and it haunts Spokane investigators for decades.
MAN: There are countless cases that are unsolved involving sex assaults, homicides,
other violent crimes. And these cases have languished for years, sometimes for decades.
NANCY GRACE: This is the story of a 45-year-long search for a killer-- a search that has finally cracked wide open
by brand new forensic science. I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC]
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Spokane, Washington, 1978. Spokane is a quiet city nestled between the Spokane River and
picturesque Selkirk Mountains. DON MCCABE: Spokane is a typical city. The crime was not as much as it is now.
Almost every day you hear of somebody getting shot and/or killed. Back then, it was a rarity.
BRAD BAXTER: Krisann is my aunt. She was 16 years old, my dad Steve's sister. He was really close with Krisann.
CHUCK BAXTER: We adopted her when she was a month old or so. My mom stayed at home and my dad worked for the post office.
It was pretty simple, just an average growing up together. BRAD BAXTER: She was a little bit of a rebellious child.
And she writes about going out with friends all the time, and going to carnivals, and she was
babysitting a lot, earning money, talking about boys a lot. There is talking about hitchhiking.
It was seen as just a way to get around. People trusted each other. It was the end of the '60s.
It was just a different mentality to strangers than it is now. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Teen girl Krisann Baxter often argues
with her mother, Charlie. And afterwards, she usually runs away. MIKE DRAPEAU: Krisann had left the house on the 26th.
They'd had an argument. She left the house. BRAD BAXTER: When she didn't come back home,
my Grandma Charlie called the authorities and reported her missing. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Four days after Krissann
was reported missing by her mother, the 16-year-old girl is found. Two utility workers are shocked when they inadvertently
discover Krisann's partially nude body underneath a set of power lines. MIKE DRAPEAU: They went over there
and checked it out and found that it was the body of a young girl. They went and just checked her real quick
and saw that she was dead. The reports indicate that both of the workers were pretty shaken up by the affair.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The utility workers immediately called 911. Then I went up and viewed the body from 6 to 10 foot radius
to start with. Then I moved in to get a closer look. MIKE DRAPEAU: She was laying on her back
with her legs spread out, and she was naked below the waist. She had some socks on, but they couldn't find her shoes.
She had a blue top that was pulled up around her neck. She had a bra that had been forcibly torn off
and had been tied around her neck. And that's probably what she was asphyxiated with.
It was still tied on her neck when they found her. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): At this point in the investigation,
police still have not identified the young victim as being Krisann Baxter. Her body is taken to a local hospital.
DON MCCABE: When we got back to the office, we met a couple of sergeants from the Spokane
Police Department. And they had a copy of a missing person's report. MIKE DRAPEAU: They were able to look
at her running report that was on file and some pictures that they had. They tentatively identified her from those photos.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The body is then identified as missing 16-year-old Krisann Baxter.
BRAD BAXTER: For my dad, he was told by his mom that she couldn't do it. She couldn't find the strength to see
her baby girl laying there. And he said that he would do it, went down and met with the coroner, and he said, yep, that's--
that's Krisann. And then he told me that he just broke down in tears when he saw that it was indeed her.
CHUCK BAXTER: My brother called me up saying, I wanted to give you some news before you seen it on TV.
He called me about 9:00 PM and told me what had happened. He just said, you know, our sister was murdered,
and I went out and just drove around for a while and thought about it. And, well, it was never the same after that.
Krisann Baxter's family tries their best to grapple with their daughter's murder.
Spokane Police launch a murder investigation. But will an autopsy provide more clues
to the identity of her killer? We find that out next on "Bloodline Detectives." [OMINOUS CHORDS]
[OMINOUS CHORDS] [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): October 4, 1978. Utility workers find the partially nude body
of a teen girl hidden under a set of power lines in Spokane, Washington. The young girl is identified as 16-year-old Krisann Baxter.
She was reported missing from home just four days earlier. The coroner performs an autopsy, hoping to find out exactly
how this young girl died. MIKE DRAPEAU: They fumed Krisann's body for fingerprints
and didn't find anything of note. They took her clothing. They found numerous hairs that were not consistent with her,
so they took those. They clipped all her dollar fingernails, took samples of her hair in case they
found her hair somewhere else on the suspect's personal items later. They took her fingerprints, in case
they find her fingerprints on something that the suspect has later. And they took lots of things from the scene.
DON MCCABE: There's a lot of paperwork involved, making sure that all the evidence was properly placed on the property,
the samples from her body, and we would put all those together for processing at a later time.
If we were fortunate enough to find a suspect, we had to separate those from the regular evidence
and make sure that they were placed into the refrigerator at the property room. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The grieving family
of Krisann Baxter make funeral arrangements for their dear girl. CHUCK BAXTER: They buried her on the 11th, on my birthday.
It was just kind of quite a-- quite a shock. It wasn't easy, you know. And then I didn't come back up to Spokane
very much because I knew that somebody here was the one that killed her. And I didn't want to--
I just didn't want to be up here. CHUCK BAXTER: She prayed a lot, so I knew that she was a believer in God.
She did say that she loved her-- her mom, and her dad, and her brothers Steve, Chuck, and Tim
multiple times in her diary. But I can only go by what I've read in that diary that she wrote in.
And she was only 15, 16 years old. Some of her friends that I actually found in her diary--
she seemed like a very great friend-- one of them actually sent me a message on Facebook saying that if she told you that she
was your friend, she meant it. And she was a very, very solid friend. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): A witness comes forward who believes he saw Krisann Baxter hitchhiking.
MIKE DRAPEAU: He had reported he was driving north on freeway and had seen a vehicle there with two people arguing
or conversating in the area. So they had an idea that it was probably a white male,
and they had an idea what he might be driving. They had a description of the truck.
I don't think they ever had anybody that he could pick out as the person he saw there.
And I don't know that they ever definitively knew that it was Krisann that they were talking to.
BRAD BAXTER: Reading in her diary, her and her friends were always going down to the 7-Eleven
by their house and then hitchhiking from there, it seemed like, from reading through the diary.
I've had a lot of scenarios run through my head. But the only one that seems to fit correctly
is that she ran away from home, and she was hitchhiking, and she got picked up by the wrong person--
a person with bad intentions. That I would ever think to hitchhike would be maybe the thrill of doing it,
the thrill of not knowing someone you're getting into a car with. Or maybe it was just because she was
looking for transportation from one side of the city to the other. From the things that I've read about her, she was feisty.
She was independent. She was a typical girl of her age. So children are the ultimate victim.
Cases are amongst the worst of the worse. Teenagers, also. So it's a disturbing case even today.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): By the early 1980s, Spokane investigators run out of leads.
DON MCCABE: We had gone out and contacted the family, and we've contacted her boyfriend from school.
He was in jail, so there was no way that he could have perpetrated this crime. MIKE DRAPEAU: They started trying to find her associates
to see who had last seen her, to see if anyone had had a hand in her death or had taken her to where she was.
And they also did tips to the community. They had numerous tipsters call in and say that they knew who might be responsible.
So they investigated all of those leads. They began to investigate people who they knew,
the usual suspects as the case is. Right? They looked at people that they thought might be good for it
from previous history in the county, and then eventually outside the county, in the state
and in the country, and figure out where those people were and go interview them.
A lot of them were excluded because they were able to show they were not-- a lot of them were truck
drivers who were in specific places at specific times or never came to Spokane. So a lot of them were eliminated that way.
The ones that could not were also polygraphed, and all of those passed. So there were no obvious suspects from that general pool.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): There's a very disturbing element added to this already tragic story.
Krisann Baxter's family actually receives dozens of distressing prank calls from individuals who claim they
murdered teen girl Krisann. And the calls are so frequently, the family finally decides to leave Spokane.
CHUCK BAXTER: Then we moved my mom out of Spokane. People would call up and say that they were the ones that
killed her, and she'd get those kind of phone calls all day long. I just thought it was kind of weird that, you know,
somebody would do something like that to another person. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Tips that
might be credible also start to dry up for Spokane investigators. DON MCCABE: Basically, when your tips stop coming in
and things to follow up, there's not too much more to do, than they would kind of close the case for investigation
until something would come up and we could open it up and go back. It never went cold in the fact that they stopped working it.
They just didn't have anywhere else to go with it, so they inactivated it. And so that's the way it stayed, roughly.
If they would get a new tip, they would work it. And then once that tip exhausted itself,
they would re-inactivate it. So it was open and closed a little bit. And then in 1984, Henry Lee Lucas,
who was a known serial killer in Florida, confessed to the State Patrol in Florida
that he had murdered Krisann Baxter and many, many other people. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): And now,
an infamous serial killer says he killed 16-year-old Krisann Baxter. The problem with that is that the serial killer,
Henry Lee Lucas, has also confessed to hundreds of other murders. Do Spokane police have a prime suspect,
or is Henry Lee Lucas lying about his involvement? We find out next on "Bloodline Detectives."
[OMINOUS CHORDS] [OMINOUS CHORDS] [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Spokane, Washington, 1984.
Police have a new lead in the 1978 rape and murder of teen runaway Krisann Baxter.
Henry Lee Lucas, a notorious serial killer, says he murdered Krisann. But can a serial killer who has lied before
be telling the truth now? CHUCK BAXTER: We always thought it was Henry Lee Lucas because he confessed to killing her.
And he described the location through a detective in Pasco, Washington, where her body was found.
And he had information that nobody else had, so they just assumed that he did it.
BRAD BAXTER: He was dubbed The Confession Killer, because he said that he killed all these people,
but there really wasn't any evidence to link these people back to his killing. I was led to believe that.
I wouldn't have thought any different. He was interviewed by detectives. I've seen transcripts of that interview.
On its face, it was like every other Henry-- Henry Lee Lucas confession. It was believable to law enforcement at the time.
He seemed to know details of the case that only someone who was there would know.
So Detective McCabe, with the Sheriff's Office, formally charged Henry Lee Lucas with the murder
of Krisann Baxter. It later turned out, with this case and many, many other cases to which he
confessed, that he was not in-- that he had been fed the information and he was just parroting what they had told him.
And he was eliminated from this case and many others by processing of his DNA, which by then was just coming about.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Henry Lee Lucas is ruled out by DNA analysis. And the case once again goes cold,
this time for over a decade. But then, 2006, the file is opened once again thanks to advancements
in forensic science. MIKE DRAPEAU: They sent many items to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab in 2006.
They processed all the evidence that they were sent, but among that was the oral swab from Krisann's mouth.
They were able to identify source male DNA profile from the semen off of that swab.
And they were able to get a profile that was good enough to be uploaded into CODIS, which is a database we use
to identify unknowns and known DNA profiles in cases that we work. So they uploaded the profile of this person
into CODIS at the time, and it's remained in CODIS being checked against everyone who's put into CODIS
since that day. And they never got a hit on that CODIS profile. It is disappointing.
That is kind of our main tool at our crime lab is CODIS. So when you don't have a hit, it's
disappointing because there's really not much else you can do except wait. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Investigators
are deeply disappointed there are no hits in the CODIS national DNA database. Now they must wait for more advancements
in forensic science. I began looking at this case in earnest in 2019. So I read through it.
I knew a little bit about forensic genealogy, so I knew that there might be something
we could do with this case and some of the others. Because we had a CODIS sample that was just sitting there,
we knew we had some DNA from the suspect. So I did some research on that. Forensic genetic genealogy is a tool for law enforcement
to solve their cold cases. They utilize DNA databases. So once a profile is built, it's uploaded to DNA databases
where that profile is matched with its genetic relatives. When we build a tree, we take the highest DNA match.
We identify who that match is, if they do not have a tree already attached to their profile,
and then we extend their branches. So we get as far back as we need to go based on the amount of DNA
they share with the person we are trying to identify. Then we go to the next match.
We do the same thing. So we work in groups first to build that common ancestor. And once we do that, we shift to another group.
And we continue to build until we reach a common ancestor. Then we work to bring those branches forward and find where
the union couple is that connects those clusters, those groups of individuals. MIKE DRAPEAU: I read through the case
to make sure that the sample we had was workable. And then I sent it to the Washington State Patrol Crime
Lab, who was just beginning to get up and running with that whole idea. So I sent it out to the lab and had them review it.
We decided which samples we were going to retest and which one would be the best.
Because you can't use the sample you've already used to generate the CODIS sample.
You have to have at least some more to do a different test on. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): In the Washington State laboratory,
forensic scientist Alison Walker prepares a DNA sample. Her intent-- to utilize the science
of investigative genetic genealogy. ALISON WALKER: We didn't have any hits in CODIS.
We had a pretty good profile up there. We were pretty confident it should hit If there was
a sample in the database, and we had exhausted all of our leads, kind of on our end.
And knowing there was still potentially a sample available that we could go back to, knowing we could get
another sample and then send it off to genetic genealogy was the key decision. So when I got the sample, it was a swab stick
in kind of a glass test tube. And what I did was I took the swab out of the test tube,
looked at it. And so I took the second half, what was left of that kind of swab fluff around there,
and did what was called a differential extraction. And so this type of extraction separates
skin cells, epithelial cells from sperm cells in the sample. And this extraction method attempted
to separate those cells to get a cleaner male profile to send off. So once I extracted those samples,
I quantified the amount of DNA that was present. And that's where we got the 1.3 nanograms of DNA.
And that was basically enough DNA for one test. So I was hoping I'd have more that I could
do some testing in our lab, get a more current STR profile, and send it out to genealogy.
But ultimately, the sample we had, we could only have one shot at it. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
MIKE DRAPEAU: On the 3rd of December 2020, I ended up selecting Othram as a likely lab to send this to.
I'd never dealt with a genealogy lab before. So I got a call from David Mittelman.
He's the CEO of Othram. We had a long conversation about the sample and what they do.
He said they were in-house, they do all their genealogy, they do all their testing.
They had good scientific process that's backed up, and he said they would take the sample.
So I selected them out of the group because no one else would do it. And we sent the sample from the state lab to Othram,
and they ended up processing it. KRISTEN MITTELMAN: The investigators realized that they could use DNA profiles that have more markers
than what is found in standard CODIS testing and be able to infer identity from crime scenes.
And they started to use assays that were built for medical testing or consumer testing.
When you go to the doctor and you give blood, you give fresh DNA, a lot of DNA. It's not contaminated.
It goes straight into a tube. It's not degraded. And unfortunately, DNA testing is a destructive process.
Every time you test that sample, you consume it. It's gone forever. And in forensics, you don't have a lot of sample,
and you can't call the perpetrator back and tell them to give you some more DNA. Right?
That's it. That's your only chance to get justice. So we decided we were going to build forensic grade genome
sequencing from the ground up. We were going to find all the pain points that are making
these cases impossible or intractable to actually solve and, one by one, tackle those pain points until we can give justice and answers
to every case, everywhere. DAVID MITTELMAN: We built a profile using forensic grade
genome sequencing. This is a technique that's based on a platform of DNA sequencing,
which is a process in which you can feed DNA to a machine, and you can essentially read out the sequence of DNA information
that is present in that DNA. And we read out the information at hundreds of thousands
of spots in the genome. And each one of these spots in the genome is a marker. So you have hundreds of thousands of DNA markers.
You can build what's called a DNA profile that consists of all these markers. And this profile can be used to do all sorts
of interesting analysis. You can dissect the historical origins of a person. You can do genetic genealogy search
and look for distant relatives that might help you infer who the person is. You can even do traditional comparisons
to exclude or include someone as a possible contributor for the DNA. The evidence was kept in good shape.
And DNA from that evidence was in good shape. So we built the profile and then we
proceeded on to this next step, which is the forensic genetic genealogy, to do the matching in a genetic genealogy database
with consenting participants, and then the genealogy to out all the familial relationships.
KRISTEN MITTELMAN: It immediately led to matches that helped the genealogist be able to build a family tree.
We were able to get sixth cousins, seventh cousins, fifth cousins. The more matches you have on a genealogical tree
from different places in the families, the faster you can get to the answer and figure out which branches to eliminate
and which branches to actually follow-- and allowed us to be able to hone into a family tree
and let law enforcement start the investigation on perpetrator for Krisann Baxter.
MIKE DRAPEAU: On the 22nd of September, they called me and said that they had been able
to process it, that they had a possible lineage for the suspect. So they sent me a ton of information
on a ton of likely persons related to the suspect. And the suspect was one or none of six
or seven people directly related to one single mother. That was excellent news. It immediately took the suspects from every single male
in the United States in 1978 to maybe six or seven people. It was Keith Douglas Lindblom.
And I felt that I should reach out to the family at that point, even though I had no definitive information,
no absolute confirmation. I thought it was probably time to reach out to the family
and say, we have a suspect. This is his name. Did you know him? Have you ever heard of him?
BRAD BAXTER: Mom called and said that there's two Spokane County Sheriffs at the door.
They have some new information on Krisann's case. And I immediately thought that this is some sort of a scam.
They're just trying to get into my parents' house to do something. Because, I mean, it's been 45 years later.
Like, I was like, this is super weird. I would never thought that anything would
have come of this that long. So I left work and I went to my parents' house. And sure enough, it was two deputies with the Spokane County
Sheriff, and they had a 3-ring binder about that thick, full of pictures, and documents, and just
everything on Krisann's case. And I thought, wow, this is-- this is real. And that's when I found out there
was another suspect that they think was the killer that actually killed Krisann.
NANCY GRACE: So who is Keith Douglas Lindblom? Is he responsible for Krisann Baxter's rape and murder
all the way back in 1978? We find out next on "Bloodline Detectives." [OMINOUS CHORDS]
[OMINOUS CHORDS] [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Spokane, Washington, 2021--
investigators now working with Othram Labs, a leader in the forensic science of investigative
genetic genealogy. Together, they firmly believe they've got a prime suspect in the 1978 murder
and rape of teen girl Krisann Baxter. Their painstaking research narrows the killer's family tree down to just one
name, Keith Douglas Lindblom. ALISON WALKER: Detective Drapeau came to the evidence window.
And he actually told the PCs, hey, go grab Alison. Bring her up here. I have some good news to tell her.
And I was like, OK, great. And so he was dropping off evidence for another case,
and he's like, here's the name of the suspect. So now we got to follow that path.
That was exciting knowing like, we finally got a name. MIKE DRAPEAU: He had been in Spokane County in 1975.
He was with a co-conspirator named Larry Powell at the time. It was conceivable that he could have been with him when
he committed a crime in 1978. He was out and available in the community to commit
this crime with or by himself. So I found that he was currently housed in the Airway
Heights Correctional Facility, which isn't normal for life without. But he's spending life without the possibility
of parole in Airway Heights Correctional Facility. I researched his criminal history,
and then I was able to go out and interview him in person because he's still around.
Once I told him kind of why I was there, he knew immediately who I was talking about.
He said that he was with Keith Lindblom in 1975. He knew Keith because Keith was dating his
15-year-old sister at the time. Keith had been in prison before. Keith was 10 years-- almost 10 years older than he was.
He kind of looked up to Keith, because Larry Powell was kind of coming up into his criminal persona,
and he thought Keith was a good role model for that. They were driving north in Larry's car.
Larry was driving, Keith was riding passenger. They saw 15-year-old girl that Larry
Powell knew from high school. And Keith asked him to stop and pick her up, so they did.
Keith produced the knife and told her not to get out of the car. He told Larry to drive to a specific location
off of Magnesium. They both raped this young girl. And Powell said he participated because he was afraid of Keith.
He'd never even had sex before. It was kind of Keith's idea, but he didn't want to turn him down.
Lindblom wanted to kill the girl so that she couldn't tell anybody, and Powell talked him out of it.
And so, eventually, they put her back in the car and they drove her off to a place about a mile
to a mile and a half from where Krisann's body was eventually found, and they dropped her out of the car
and drove away. And she immediately told someone. They were apprehended. The knife was recovered in the car.
They were charged and eventually convicted of that crime. I was able to find some portion of the court record
from that particular charge in '78, and find that Lindblom had pled guilty to the assault.
He'd gone to jail. His sentence was listed as 26 years, and they gave him 7 and 1/2.
Eventually, because his sentence had been limited by the independent sentencing review board in '78,
I was able to get a single letter from the sentencing review board that gave his release and parole dates.
And he was released from custody to his own recognizance on that charge on August of 1978.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] DON MCCABE: It's very frustrating when those things happen. Each jurisdiction has their play at hand,
and they have to do what they have to do. I don't know why they let him out. NANCY GRACE: Keith Douglas Lindblom
is released from prison just two months before Krisann Baxter's murder. Detectives then learn he dies in a house fire in 1981,
and he's cremated. They still need a DNA sample to confirm he is the killer. That's next on "Bloodline Detectives."
[OMINOUS CHORDS] [OMINOUS CHORDS] [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Spokane, Washington, 2023.
Bloodline detectives are convinced they've IDed the killer of teen girl Krisann Baxter
back in 1978. The killer's name-- Keith Douglas Lindblom. But there's a big catch to confirming
whether it's Lindblom. He's dead. He was cremated. Investigators now must track down his relatives.
They've got to match the relatives' DNA to the DNA recovered at the original crime scene.
Detective Drapeau that the suspect did have a daughter, and so he started tracking down a reference sample from her.
She gave investigators there her DNA, which got back to me. I sent it to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab,
because that's something we can do on our side with our processing techniques, is see
if there's a direct relation. ALISON WALKER: I got the reference sample in on July 11, got some of my coworkers
to help me run it really fast. So we were able to run it that same day, do the comparison.
And when I do a comparison to look for familial relations, because she was his direct offspring,
she should share half of her DNA with her father. And then, if her father left the source of the DNA
from the homicide, she should basically match 50% of the DNA profile from that unknown male
in the oral swabs. So that's what I was looking at, is comparing her reference sample to that unknown male profile from the oral swabs
and seeing is it consistent with being a parent-child relationship, am I seeing her sharing
50% of the DNA profile. And I did. MIKE DRAPEAU: We took that DNA sample from her
and sent it to Othram, who checks thousands and thousands of locations and not just 11.
And they were able to definitively match her as the definite biological descendant of--
of the suspect DNA, which was Keith Lindblom. DAVID MITTELMAN: I'm very excited and also relieved to be
able to call law enforcement and tell them, you know, good news like this. I'm excited because it's our mission and our goal
to help bring answers and justice to all victims and their families. And then I'm relieved because you
take on a massive responsibility when you receive evidence, or even the derivative work
product of evidence. And there's a tremendous responsibility. You don't want to mishandle this evidence.
You don't want to consume it without getting answers. You don't want to do something that could
set the investigation back. So there's a lot of pressure to make sure that you can deliver something that would be helpful.
And so seeing the case through to the end is exciting because it goes to our mission
and why we get up in the morning. And then there's also just kind of a sense of relief,
because we know that we were able to do the job, and do it well, and not do anything
that would, in any other way, make it harder to solve the case. ALISON WALKER: I think this is very cool.
I never thought I would be in a position to solve a cold case. When I started here, they were very daunting, very
scary cases to work. But actually working one and solving one, it's just super amazing.
I can't even really find a good adjective to describe it. The biggest kind of fact for me was I
wasn't even alive when the crime took place. So the fact that when I think about that,
and that they were working so hard to try to solve this crime, and I was just going about my merry way through school
and just kind of living my life, and then our paths just kind of came together, to be that person
is just awesome. I thought that it was all done and over with until Brad told me what was going on.
I was surprised to hear that they'd been on it all this time. I was very impressed with that.
And I thought that after a few years, that it'd just all go away. But it's all still there.
That was nice. Well, he's gone, so that's good enough for me. Don't have to go through all that all over again.
BRAD BAXTER: It was pretty mind blowing to know how they found this out with the genetic genealogy
and the DNA. It's pretty incredible that they could do those kind of things nowadays, find a murderer.
I'd like to think that I'm a good person. I would never wish harm on anyone. But he was a--
a pretty bad human to-- to kill someone. So I do think that I would have wished that he would have been
alive, and they could have found him guilty and put him behind bars. It kind of makes me think that there's
a little bit of a failing system back then, that he should have been behind bars longer.
Because I believe that letting him out was a direct result of Krisann dying. If he would have been behind bars still,
Krisann may still be with us today. [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC] It's-- it's hard to-- to talk about, knowing that she never
was able to grow up from that little girl and live a-- live a full life. I believe she would have been a very outspoken woman
and been a successful-- successful gal. CARLA DAVIS: The one thing about the perpetrator being deceased,
justice is still served. And if it's been decades, then it's possible that no one else was hurt
or no one else was a victim. So I think that it's a-- you know, yes, you do want that person to be alive so the family can
have that closure. But I think they can get closure and have peace knowing that maybe someone else
is alive because they're not. KRISTEN MITTELMAN: Part of me wishes that the family
could have gotten justice. It's an incredible moment to know every one of these cases--
and we have thousands of them now-- they change you. Every story, every person's case,
it touches you in a different way. You would think you would become desensitized to some of this.
You never do. It never doesn't feel like a huge win to be able to get the answer.
Every case is just as important as the other one. It doesn't matter if it's a notorious case,
a contemporary case, a case that's been cold for decades, or a case no one ever wrote an article about.
There is someone out there-- there are a lot of someones out there, that's what I've learned,
that need to hear the answer. BRAD BAXTER: I'd also like to add that if there's any other families out there that
have a case similar to this, to not give up. Because there is hope, and we're a prime example of it.
The heartbreaking case of teen girl Krisann Baxter's murder proves that even when a killer is no longer alive,
he cannot escape justice. Keith Douglas Lindblom is confirmed. He is the killer of Krisann Baxter,
and that's confirmed long after both the killer and the victim have left this Earth.
Yet, even in death, Lindblom cannot hide from his own family tree-- a family tree that proves he is a killer.
I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us here on "Bloodline Detectives." [OMINOUS CHORDS]
[OMINOUS CHORDS] [THEME MUSIC]

In 1978 the body of teen Krisann Baxter is found in Spokane, Washington. The case troubles investigators for over 40 years, but now a forensic technique may solve the mystery.

Now in its fifth 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.

Brief Summary

Krisann Baxter's 1978 murder is solved using DNA, identifying Keith Douglas Lindblom as her killer decades later.

Key points

The Discovery of Krisann Baxter. Utility workers find the body of 16-year-old Krisann Baxter, leading to a murder investigation.
The Haunting Cold Case. Krisann's case goes cold, leaving investigators haunted for decades.
Henry Lee Lucas Confession. Notorious serial killer Henry Lee Lucas confesses to murdering Krisann, but is he telling the truth?
Advancements in Forensic Science. New forensic techniques open the case again after decades of stagnation.
The Role of Forensic Genetic Genealogy. Investigators turn to genetic genealogy to solve the cold case.
DNA Leads to Suspect. Investigators narrow down the suspect to Keith Douglas Lindblom using genetic genealogy.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She was a little bit of a rebellious child.

Describing Krisann's personality

2:46WatchMay 16, 2025

Tension

80/ 100High tension

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