The Murder of Cathy Sposito | Bloodline Detectives with Nancy Grace | Forensic Files

[TENSE MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): 1987, Prescott, Yavapai County, Arizona. Hikers hear a scream from Thumb Butte Trail.
They heard her scream for help. Some people said they heard a gunshot. It's a gruesome scene.
There's crime scenes, and then there's scenes like this, where it's just above and beyond the brutality.
When you have knife wounds and gunshot wounds and blunt force trauma, that's an attacker
that's acting out of rage. And I think really frightened the detectives that knew that information.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The body of a young woman discovered. Police rush to the scene.
The news of an event like this happening at such a popular and well-known trail in a small rural community
at the time would have most definitely been shocking to the community. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The case goes cold,
but investigators keep returning to the case over the next 35 years. It was always at the back of the detectives' minds.
But we had new cases that came in, and we had priorities set. It went cold, but they never threw the case away.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Breakthroughs in DNA science will allow this case to be reopened.
Detectives will connect this sex predator to more attacks. I was scared to walk anywhere.
You know, wonder if I run into him. Wonder if I see him at a restaurant. I didn't know that there were other victims.
I mean, she had her whole life, and he just killed her. I think my favorite part about genealogy being used in this way
is that people who thought they were gonna get away with something that happened 30 years ago
are now being caught. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): This is the story of the search for a killer and a sex predator, a search
that lasts a stunning 36 years. I'm Nancy Grace. Welcome to "Bloodline Detectives."
[THEME MUSIC] 1987, Prescott, Yavapai County, Arizona, a picturesque city known for its charming small town
feel and its natural beauty. So our county is about 8,000 square miles, a little over.
And it's rural. It's urban. It's mountains. It's desert. There's water. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Nature lovers
head out early to the popular Thumb Butte Trail. That way, they avoid the scorching
mid-summer temperatures. You can see it from all over town. It's on our county seal.
The trail was all dirt at one time. Now parts of it are paved. But it's-- it's always been kind of that hiking
trail that people gravitate to. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): 23-year-old local student Cathy Sposito loves to ride her bike and hike the area.
We were a close family. It was me and my sister and brother and parents. I was three years older than Cathy.
She graduated from high school in Brooklyn, and then she wanted to go out West. And my mother was against that idea.
But when Cathy became an adult and especially she wanted to go to school out there,
my mother couldn't stop her. She was attending Prescott College, studying outdoor studies, ecology.
She was someone who's been described as loving the outdoors, wanting to go camping, hiking.
She was known to ride her bicycle around town. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): June 13, 1987.
Cathy Sposito leaves home for one of her routine hikes. She locked her bicycle up at the bottom of the trail,
and then she went on a hike onto what we call the Thumb Butte Loop Trail. And she doesn't get very far from the parking
lot and the camp area. And she's attacked. There were several other users of the trail that day.
There was arguing or loud voices heard and then ultimately some cries for help. Some people said they heard a gunshot.
And it was a couple that-- that found her first. The people who discovered her on the trail flagged down
a motorist, who had a CB radio, who called it in and-- and called the police. And, of course, it was assigned to the sheriff's
department, who responded. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): First responders tried to revive Cathy Sposito, but she has passed away.
We had a number of deputies that responded. And then we had, I believe, four detectives
that came out there at the time and started trying to process that scene. So one of our deputies, he arrived on scene,
made his way up there, and he came up, saw a woman that was covered in a blanket, removed the blanket,
and there was blood head to toe on her. Everywhere had blood smears all over her.
She had massive injuries to her head. He observed that there was a blood trail further up
the trail, but looking at the body, it appeared that there was blunt force trauma to the head,
several stab wounds, some cut marks across her forehead, and that her left eye, somebody had shot her in her left eye.
About 6 feet away, we found a shell casing, a .22-caliber shell casing. We collected that also.
Not far from the scene, they found a ratchet. We believe that that was, at that time,
likely one of the weapons that was used to assault her. And it turned out that it was.
Interestingly, about this crime scene, all of the clothing that Cathy was wearing was intact.
Nothing was ripped. It didn't appear that anything was taken off her body. She was found in the clothes that she
was wearing at the time. She was found wearing red shorts, a bikini top, white shoes with gray socks.
She had a backpack and a yellow bicycle helmet. She didn't have any ID on her. We found an address book in there,
and we worked back from there and found out that she lived over on-- on Division Street at the time.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Detectives must now inform Cathy Sposito's family. That day, I came home from work, and a cousin of mine
answered the door. And I was like, Joey, what are you doing here? And I went into the house and saw other relatives there,
and they broke the news to me that Cathy was killed in Arizona. It was a blur in some ways, but I remember
it was very depressing. I can remember now thinking about it, I don't remember much about that day,
but I do remember coming home, sitting in the yard. It was very hard, especially my mother.
She suffered greatly and wanting answers about what happened, why this happened to Cathy.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): A young woman beaten dead in broad daylight. Police search for a killer before he strikes again.
That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." [TENSE MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Prescott, Arizona, 1987.
The body of a beautiful young woman, 23-year-old Cathy Sposito, discovered on a popular hiking trail.
It's early in the morning when she's savagely attacked. Investigators hope and pray her autopsy will tell them how
she died and who killed her. The coroner finds that Cathy Sposito is stabbed in her right ear.
She's shot in her left eye. She has bruising all over her eyes and her face. She has a broken nose, a broken tooth.
And they find that she was attacked with that racket wrench and also rocks. And the way that her injuries were,
the coroner believed that her attacker might have been left handed. The coroner finds that Cathy's manner of death is homicide,
but the cause of death is ruled blunt force trauma and extreme blood loss. You've got an attacker who's very, very acting out of rage
at that point. When you have knife wounds and gunshot wounds and a blunt force trauma, that's an attacker
that's acting out of rage. And that was something that was very key to the investigation
and I think really frightened the detectives that knew that information. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The medical examiner
begins by collecting DNA sample from Cathy Sposito's body. This was 1987. DNA science and evaluation and use
for criminal identification purposes kind of started in England in about 1985. So DNA had been around, but it hadn't matured to the point
of spreading to law enforcement in general here in the United States and particularly
in a small town environment here. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): DNA from an unknown individual
is recovered from the body of young hiker Cathy Sposito. The medical examiner, upon performing the autopsy,
discovered that she had a broken front tooth, but her mouth was relatively unscathed.
So it didn't look like she was struck in the mouth with a rock or a wrench or something
but possibly soft tissue, a fist. So the idea was, well, maybe our assailant's DNA
might be in the blood in her mouth that was recovered. And so we did discover not a full,
but a near full profile of male DNA in her mouth. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Detectives take a closer look
at Cathy Sposito's circle of friends and acquaintances, looking for potential suspects.
There was an artist who Cathy had posed for him in his artwork and photographs. The artist only used her for a short amount of time
because he said she can't sit still. She's too fidgety, and I need somebody that's gonna sit still.
And so he-- you know, he was paying her to sit and ended up not using her after that.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The artist for whom Cathy Sposito posed has a strong alibi,
and he is ruled out as a suspect. Detectives focus on another individual connected to Cathy Sposito.
We believe he had some friendship with Cathy Sposito at the time. He told detectives that he saw Cathy about
a week before she was killed. But through their investigation, detectives learned that didn't quite add up with eyewitness interviews.
He takes a lie detector test and fails. He's not telling the truth. They were able to place him at Murphy's Bar just a day before.
And that's where Cathy was a waitress. When we come back to "Bloodline Detectives,"
police believe they finally have a prime suspect. But can they prove it? [TENSE MUSIC]
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Prescott, Arizona, 1987. Detectives investigating the sex assault
and murder of a young hiker, 23-year-old Cathy Sposito. Her body found in broad daylight on a local hiking trail.
Detectives now believe one of her own acquaintances has something to hide. Detectives go and search his home,
and in there, they find some tools, including a Craftsman half socket wrench. And remember, it was a socket wrench that was found
at Cathy Sposito's crime scene. He couldn't be excluded from-- from being of the same type that we found out at the scene.
Of course, back then, you really, you know, only had a couple of-- of tool manufacturers.
You know, that was unfortunate that, you know, we just didn't have the capability
back then that we have now to-- to rule things in or out. We started investigating and found
out that he had a friend that was a paramedic that was on scene. And that paramedic actually fed information to him.
He had intimate knowledge of things in the investigation and in the injuries to Cathy that
were not let out to the public. I don't know what his motive would have been. It-- it didn't appear from the reports
that he was trying to help us solve her murder, but all it did was it gave us more ammunition and gave us the opportunity
to look at him further when he could have discounted himself right from the beginning.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The man, who looked so promising as suspect number one, is cleared.
That's not all. The leads are starting to dry up. It's the worst position for investigators
to be in when you have this brutal homicide of a college girl. And not only can they not give Cathy Sposito's family any
answers, they have an entire community who is waiting for somebody to be arrested and held
accountable so that they can breathe a sigh of relief because at this point now, everyone's scared.
Slowly, it started going colder and colder and colder until about the mid-'90s when we really started
having success with DNA. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): 2013, investigators take another look at the DNA evidence from Cathy
Sposito's 1987 murder. The medical examiner here in Yavapai County in 1987 noticed
evidence of-- of injury to the front of her mouth, her lip, and her teeth. And so he had swabbed that portion of her mouth.
And so it was on that swab that we found male DNA, what we call Y-STR DNA. It was huge.
And you get very excited. But, of course, in 2013, the only thing we could do was put it into CODIS.
CODIS is a huge tool for investigators. CODIS stands for the Combined DNA Index System.
And how that works is they will upload DNA from a criminal to that system once they're booked into jail.
And that's used so that if they get a DNA hit elsewhere, whether it's within their own agency or to another state,
it helps catch people for other crimes if they're already incarcerated. And so that's what they needed to do
was upload this DNA they now had to CODIS. But at the time, they didn't get any hits.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Now detectives take another approach to Cathy Sposito's murder.
They begin to investigate cold cases in the area that occurred around the same time as Cathy's murder.
They catch a break. They discover a very similar attack also occurred on the Thumb Butte Trail in 1990.
There was a detective in here, Detective Pritchard, and they were going through a bunch of old cold cases.
And-- and this was never done back in the day because we didn't-- you don't even think about
one crime being connected to another crime to another crime. And he started looking through these old files,
and that's when he found the other case that was similar to Cathy's. April 22, 1990.
In this case, a young woman is hiking, just like Cathy was. And she is attacked with a rock and sexually assaulted.
But she gets away. She's told, though, by the assailant, do not tell anybody about this.
So as soon as she gets back down to that base camp, the trailhead area, that's when she contacts
police and goes in for testing. We have two girls, both attacked in this same location
three years apart. Both attacked with rocks as part of this assault. Could these be linked?
Could these be related? NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): 2020. Yavapai County detectives need help.
DNA research can be very costly, and it's usually performed by private labs that specialize
in advanced forensic science. Investigators need money to carry out this very costly cold case research.
And they get that help from the neighboring Maricopa County attorney's office. It's called a SAKI Grant, and it exists to close
unsolved sex assault cases. From the 1990 case, we had a very solid, unknown male sample of DNA.
Those comparisons were made to different pieces of evidence in the Cathy Sposito homicide.
And it was very, very likely that the unknown male DNA from the 1990 sexual assault kit had also
deposited DNA on these murder weapons in the Cathy Sposito homicide. Parabon was brought into the picture
under the Sex Offender Kit Investigation Grant from Maricopa County. We were able to send some of her DNA extracts of the--
the rape victim, who was not murdered, to Parabon Lab to do genetic profiling. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Scientists at Parabon Nano
Laboratories used the DNA found at Cathy Sposito's crime scene to create something called a phenotype snapshot.
Phenotyping is a brand new scientific technique that can accurately predict a killer's
physical characteristics. Phenotyping is a different type of genetic genealogy. What they do is they take the DNA sample,
and they can tell generally what color of hair you have, what color of eyes you have, skin tones, heritage,
regions of the world that they came from, whether they were Eastern European or Native
American or African-American. And they can build these profiles from that, and they can actually get a picture through this DNA
and possibly give you a sketch of what they possibly look like. Parabon delivered a snapshot phenotype
report on April 9, 2020. We predicted with high confidence that the perpetrator had light skin, blue-green eyes,
and light brown to blonde hair. They were hopeful that putting an image out like this
would generate some leads, but it just didn't really go anywhere. They have tried just about everything,
and it hasn't worked. But now investigators have technology on their side with forensic genetic genealogy.
So they decide, we're gonna try everything in this path. What do we have to lose at this point?
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Detectives decide to give Parabon Nano Labs the green light
to conduct investigative genetic genealogy tests. Six days later, we delivered a preliminary genetic genealogy
report on April 15, 2020. At that time, we had only uploaded the profile to the GEDmatch database, which is
one of two databases that allows law enforcement to compare against it. And the top match we had was really quite distant.
It was only 61 centimorgans. So that is maybe a third cousin if we're lucky, but very
likely, even more distant. So we recommended, among other things, that we upload to the Family Tree DNA database.
So most of our research is building family trees, building them back in time and then building them
forward, trying to identify who could be the contributor of that DNA. We're looking for people who moved close to the crime scene.
Very occasionally it's someone just passing through, but about 99% of the time in our cases,
it leads us right back to a local, somebody who was living very close to the crime scene.
Our genetic genealogists worked for many months building these trees backward and forward from these very
distant matches. Ultimately, three of these matches converged to identify a genetic network based on a couple with the last name
Bennett, born in the 1700s. That meant that it was necessary to perform descendancy research
or build forward from that couple to try to identify their descendants. As that tree was built forward in time,
three other very distant matches, down to 17 centimorgans, were tied into their family descendants.
And ultimately, the genetic genealogy led to two brothers, who lived in the area of the crime in the '80s and '90s.
[TENSE MUSIC] When Parabon came up with the names of Brian Bennett and his brother, to have names associated with DNA profiles
that until that time had no name, it was a boost of hope. It was a boost of confidence.
And it was-- it was very hopeful that we were going to be able to provide the answer of who did this to Cathy.
[TENSE MUSIC] Where do you start when you've-- you've gone that many years? I mean, you know, 33 years from the time this case
started, and a lot of us had been working on this case for 10 or 11 years at that time.
I mean, first, you're just kind of like, oh, my god, we've got somewhere to go. Now we just have to dot the I's and cross the T's.
But then you realize that dotting the I's and crossing the T's, you know, there's a lot that has to be done there.
We couldn't say for sure at that point that it wasn't the brother, but we found other cases of allegations
of sexual assault against Brian Bennett in the Yavapai County area, the Prescott area, and what we call
the Quad City area from around that time, late '80s and early '90s. He had gone to school here at Prescott High School.
He would have graduated-- had he graduated from here, he would have graduated, I believe, in 1989 or 1990.
He was young, 16 or 17 years old. We kind of used that information to rule out the brother
because he would have been 14 at that time, which as unlikely as it seems that a 16-year-old would do
this, it seemed even more unlikely that a 14-year-old would do it. We learned that he was also named as a suspect in two
other sexual assault cases. [TENSE MUSIC] One was in Chino Valley, and it was at a young person's house
party in which he followed a young woman into the bedroom and sexually assaulted her while she was in there.
And her friends came in and broke up the attack, and he went out the bedroom window.
He was actually arrested and charged. And we went to trial on that particular case.
And unfortunately, the witnesses identified his brother as the suspect, and the victim identified
Brian Bennett as the suspect. And the jury was sufficiently confused. And they acquitted him for that sexual assault.
And then a short time after that, he was named as a suspect in another sexual assault
in which he kidnapped a woman at knifepoint. I kept going to the police station.
And I was like, you got to do something about this. Like, this guy's gonna do it again.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The Bloodline Detectives believe they are this close to identifying a vicious killer.
We find out next if Brian Bennett is the man responsible for a savage attack and murder back in 1987.
[TENSE MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Prescott, Arizona, 2020. Detectives have reopened the 1987 murder of 23-year-old Cathy
Sposito, the beautiful young woman found beaten dead and sex assaulted in broad daylight.
Now, investigative genetic genealogists have narrowed the suspect list down to two brothers, one of them also linked
to two additional sex assaults. They find this case from June of 1993. A woman had gone to the post office in town,
and while she was in there, this man grabs her by knifepoint, pulls her into his car, takes her to an area,
and viciously rapes her. He just got very violent out there. And, you know, at that point, you know,
he was like, you know I'm not gonna be able to let you go, right, because you've seen my face.
I didn't think I was gonna live. And I had my babies that I wanted to get home to, you know?
And I thought I would never see them again. I remember him saying that he was the black sheep of his family.
I remember him saying that he hated women. And then at that point, he started to drive.
She complied the whole time. He ended up taking money from her. He ended up stealing her wedding ring, put her back in the car,
driving down Girlie Street, and they happened to be pulled over by Prescott Police Department.
You know, at that point, he had told me, he says, you better not make a sound. You better not scream, anything, or I'll kill you.
And I believe-- I don't know, I can't say for sure, but I believe that that police officer did see me.
And then at that point, he-- he told him, sir, I need you to get out of the car.
Well, as soon as he got out of the car, I jumped into the driver's seat and floored
it all the way into Prescott. And I pulled into JB's parking lot because there was, like,
all these police cars following me. So when I stopped, I got out of the car, which
I couldn't walk at that point, and I fell onto the concrete, the pavement. And I was just crying.
Like, I was crying. And, you know, I was just like, help me. And then I told them what happened.
You know, and I was like, he raped me, you know? He-- he was trying to kill me. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Brian Bennett is arrested,
but then he's let go by police. Why? Because there are new discrepancies in the story
of the key witness. Detectives do not feel they've got enough evidence to hold him.
They, unfortunately, put her on a polygraph test, and there was some deception in that, whether that was her being
extremely nervous because she was just assaulted or what was going on. So he skated on that.
I kept going to the police station. And I was like, you got to do something about this.
Like, this guy's gonna do it again. You know, I'm afraid he's gonna get a little kid.
Like, you got to do something. And I said, he had gotten in my purse. And he saw my license.
And he told me. He was like, I know where you live. I was very scared. I was scared to do anything.
I was scared that he was gonna come to the house. I was scared to let my oldest daughter go out to play.
I was scared to let her out in the yard. I was scared to walk anywhere. I was scared to go shopping.
I was scared to go to the store. I was like, you know, wonder if I run into him.
I wonder if I see him at a restaurant. I wonder if I see him at a store. Like, you know, what am I gonna do?
What are you prepared to do? I felt bad for Renee Sandoval because she's still here in the community.
I wish that he would have been prosecuted for that case. And it was regretful the way that it was handled at the time.
[TENSE MUSIC] That was an aha moment for me because it's like, oh, man, there's a chance that we can get this solved.
We need to go find him. So then reading through the rest of the report, they did some additional forensics
and found out that he'd killed himself in 1994. It kind of took the air out of my lungs because we got him,
and now we don't have him. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Brian Bennett dies by self-inflicted gunshot, 1994.
It's a devastating blow to the investigation, but detectives still must know, is he
the one responsible for multiple rapes and for Cathy Sposito's brutal murder? That's next on "Bloodline Detectives."
[TENSE MUSIC] NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Prescott, Arizona, 2022. Bloodline Detectives are certain they know the name of the man
who viciously sex assaults and murders Cathy Sposito back in 1987. His name, Brian Bennett.
Problem, Bennett is dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Detectives still must link him to Cathy Sposito's murder.
Investigators are in a tough place at this point. They have these two potential suspects and potential leads
in the case. Brian Scott Bennett is dead. They can't go ask him for his DNA. So that means they have to ask his daughter if she'll
give her DNA in this case. And that's an incredibly hard question to ask somebody who may not have any idea what her father was
potentially involved in. We approached her about it. She was really hesitant about it,
but her and her father had not been on good terms for a long time. Her mother had passed away years before.
And so they really didn't have a whole lot of contact. But she was willing to give us a DNA sample.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Detectives also want a DNA sample from Brian Bennett's brother
so they can rule him out. Myself, a sergeant, and the deputy, the case agent on the call, we hopped on a plane.
We flew out there, met with Kentucky State Police, and said, OK, we're gonna go get the brother's DNA.
We approached him. We set up a plan. We were waiting for him to come around. We spent a day and a half waiting for him to come--
come back. He was working on a remote job site. And as he pulled into the driveway, a whole bunch of us
swarmed in on him and took him into custody and said-- we walked up to him and said, here's who we are.
We're from the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office in Prescott, Arizona. We are here, and we want your DNA.
And he said no and heck no and every other cuss word. And we handed him the search warrant and said,
we are going to take your DNA sample. We are going to take a swab from you. It's gonna happen one of two ways.
You're either gonna comply with this, or we're gonna take you down to the jail, and we're gonna strap you in a chair,
and we're gonna take your DNA. We have a warrant signed from a judge here in Kentucky.
And so then he went ahead and gave us a DNA sample. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The DNA sample reveals Brian Bennett's
brother is not a match. Detectives now focus on their main suspect, Brian Bennett.
And they get a court-ordered grant to have his body exhumed, dug up, so another DNA sample can be
extracted from his dead body. We show up. We serve the search warrant on the cemetery.
Somebody to come in, dig him up, dig everything up. We opened up the casket. He was still in relatively good shape.
Pretty mummified. There was not a whole lot left of him except for skeletal remains.
So we had a big tent set up, and they extracted those DNA pieces of bone. We took a lot of parts and a lot of teeth,
and then we put everything back. We also did find the .22 bullet that he had shot himself with.
It was inside the skull cavity. And so when we were done collecting-- or the anthropologists were done collecting their samples,
we put everything back in the casket, and we closed it back up, sealed it back up, and--
and reburied him. That DNA sample was then sent to two labs, Arizona Department of Public
Safety and Marshall University. Both of those labs were able to successfully extract DNA samples from Brian's remains in February 2023.
And in March 2023, the match was finally confirmed. [TENSE MUSIC] Brian Scott Bennett was solid unknown male DNA profile
from the 1990 sexual assault case and also a major contributor on the murder weapons to the Cathy Sposito case.
A call just came out of the blue. It was a sheriff's detective. And he introduced himself.
And then he said that they worked the case through DNA. It took me back to being that 20-year-old
girl that that happened to. And just all the memories of what happened flooded back because I always thought it was just me.
I didn't know that there were other victims. I never knew that. And then to learn that he killed someone, and this girl was--
I mean, she had her whole life. And he just killed her. This case would not be solved without
forensic genetic genealogy. And we see this now time and time again. And I think my favorite part about genealogy being used
in this way is that people who thought they were gonna get away with something that happened 30 years ago are now being caught.
I think this is the way that cold cases that sit on a shelf are going to be solved.
And it takes agencies like Yavapai County Sheriff's Office to invest in forensic genetic genealogy
because they are seeing this pay off time and time again. I don't believe Cathy's murder or the other three rapes
would have been solved without this tool. [TENSE MUSIC] The evidence that was preserved in this case
proved to be very crucial in us being able to obtain samples, for us being able to look at things like DNA.
In 1987, when this crime was committed, that wasn't even something that detectives were conceptualizing.
Investigators, as time went on, assess what technology, what advances could be applied to solving this case.
I think suicide was an easy way for him the get off that he never had to face Cathy's mom.
He never had to face the families or any of these other victims. And he did have to face one of them in trial,
and he was acquitted. Personally, I think that that's an easy way to get off. However, that probably was the best outcome for other people
that were out there that were never victims because this guy was a monster. And him taking his own life prevented that from happening
any more than it already did. But who knows the untold horror that could have occurred had he gone on living?
I couldn't be more proud of the people who worked on this. For what they had available to them in 1987,
they did a-- a tremendous job of preserving what needed to be preserved so that we could get this answer,
you know, all these decades later. NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Police share the news
with Brian Bennett's sex assault survivors and with Cathy Sposito's family, the case
finally solved after 33 years. Well, I was shocked, and I was surprised, especially hearing his age.
For years, we always thought it was something personal, somebody, you know, close to Cathy who did that,
maybe somebody who liked her. I just can't let this experience, this monster, keep me from enjoying life.
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The lives of crime victims are never the same after. That's how it is for survivor Renee Sandoval.
Only her courage and her prayers see her through the nightmare that she lives, a nightmare that never
really ends, even though justice of sorts is found. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for being with us here at "Bloodline Detectives."
[TENSE MUSIC]

30 years after college student Cathy Sposito was found brutally killed on a Prescott, Arizona hiking trail, can a groundbreaking new forensic tool help find her killer at last?

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

Cathy Sposito's 1987 murder is solved 36 years later through DNA evidence linking Brian Bennett to the crime.

Key points

The Discovery of Cathy Sposito. In 1987, the body of 23-year-old Cathy Sposito is found on a popular hiking trail, shocking the Prescott community.
DNA Breakthroughs. After decades, advancements in DNA technology allow detectives to reopen the cold case.
Identifying a Suspect. Investigators connect DNA evidence to a potential suspect, Brian Bennett, after years of searching.
Trial and Confusion. Brian Bennett was acquitted due to jury confusion despite being identified as a suspect.
DNA Breakthrough. Detectives exhumed Brian Bennett's body to extract DNA, leading to a crucial match.
Case Finally Solved. After 33 years, detectives confirm Brian Bennett's involvement in Cathy Sposito's murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I didn't know that there were other victims.

Survivor's realization about the perpetrator

1:43WatchMay 30, 2025

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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