The Murder of Nadine Madger | Bloodline Detectives with Nancy Grace | Forensic Files

[THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Willoughby, Ohio, 1980. Mark Madger comes home to find his wife Nadine lying
in a pool of her own blood. Nadine has been viciously stabbed dead. When I opened the door, she'd be right in front
of me laying on the floor. Her head tilted down with a big knife in her. I couldn't believe it.
The first thing-- I just remember saying, no, Nadine, no. NANCY GRACE: Nadine Madger's baby son Daniel found unharmed
next to his mother's body. I came to the conclusion that the case would never be solved.
I pretty much gave up hoping it. I figured there's no cameras back then, there's no witnesses, there was no nothing.
I didn't dwell on it because I didn't think dwelling on it would bring me any closure.
NANCY GRACE: But closure is exactly what police want to give Nadine's infant son and her husband Mark,
even if it takes decades. This is the story of a groundbreaking new forensic science and how it might solve the gruesome murder
of a beautiful young mother. I'm Nancy Grace. Welcome to "Bloodline Detectives."
[THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: 1980, Willoughby, Ohio, a small city along the shore of Lake Erie
about 20 miles from Cleveland. Willoughby is an amazing city. We have a little bit of everything.
We've got an airport, a hospital, we're kind of tucked in between Cleveland and Painesville.
It's a nice area to grow up. It's a great place to work, live, and play at. NANCY GRACE: Nadine Madger lives in Willoughby.
She's in her early 20s with a good job and everything to live for. When I worked at the one body shop.
On Friday, I'd go and cash my check, and she was a new teller there. So I would always go to her, and after about six weeks
or so, I got the courage to ask her out. And the first date, I picked her up and it was cold outside,
and I had a jacket on and she didn't. So I took her out to dinner and a movie, and on the way back, I dropped her off obviously
and gave her a kiss. So that was the first date. NANCY GRACE: Mark and Nadine are married less than four years
after that very first date, and soon, they become a family of three with the arrival
of baby boy Daniel. We actually went out to dinner with this one friend of ours the night before and her water broke.
So we had the meal ordered and we told the waitress that it's not going to happen.
So we called the doctor, we went to the hospital. He was great. He didn't make a lot of noise.
He didn't cry much. He was easy. He was beautiful. NANCY GRACE: Sadly, this happy family
is about to be torn apart by a brutal crime that will be remembered for decades.
January 11, 1980, like every other day, Mark comes home from his auto body shop for lunch.
I got home and I sat by her. She was holding Danny in her lap, rocking him, and he was kind of going to sleep.
So we talked a little bit, I gave her a kiss, and I walked to the door. Waved to her and closed the door,
and that's the last time I saw her alive. NANCY GRACE: Back at work, Mark calls home to check in on Nadine and baby Daniel,
but there's no answer. I told the guys, just get out of here, and I locked the shop up and went home.
And I honestly don't know if I put the key into the door or if I just opened the door.
I really don't remember. When I opened the door, she'd be right in front of me laying on the floor with her head tilted
down with a big knife in her. Couldn't believe it. The first thing-- I just remember saying, no, Nadine,
no. I couldn't get the phone to work. The phone was covered in blood. So I picked Danny up out of the crib.
And I was yelling that my wife has been stabbed. A lady upstairs answered her door.
I don't even know who she was. I know she lived there, and I just handed Danny to her.
I said, please, call the police. My wife has been stabbed. NANCY GRACE: Detective Ken Eisele steps inside
and he, a veteran crime fighter, is shocked by the savage crime scene. Through the doorway, I could see the victim
laying in the corner with a large knife protruding from her chest. I could see on the floor what appeared to be footprints
in blood, but they were dried up, along next to some other prints that were a work shoe that
obviously left moisture having come in from the outside a short time ago. When I look at those pictures, it's really hard
to describe the violence and viciousness that took place in that little dining room.
It looks like it was from a horror movie, is the best way I can explain it. NANCY GRACE: The murder weapon, a kitchen knife.
The victim found in her own home. It's SOP, standard operating procedure, detectives will first look at Nadine's husband Mark
as a prime suspect. They asked me the same questions over and over and over again, and I was starting
to get mad because I thought, what the hell are you asking me for? Find the person who did this.
I couldn't understand why they were asking me questions. NANCY GRACE: Willoughby police question husband Mark Madger.
Meanwhile, news spreads quickly about Nadine's brutal murder. Willoughby is a town where violent crime
is very, very rare. The tight knit community living now in fear. These things just don't happen in Willoughby,
or at least that's what we try to tell ourselves. NANCY GRACE: Mark is still being questioned by police.
Many local residents want to believe detectives already have their man. When you have a lack of information out there,
that's a quick summary to go to. The community wanted us to find out who was involved,
and when you only have the one person involved, it's easy to rush to that judgment.
NANCY GRACE: The Willoughby community may be rushing to judgment about husband Mark Madger,
but police are not. There's a savage killer on the loose. Can detectives find him before he strikes again?
That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: January, 1980, the normally quiet
commuter town of Willoughby, Ohio is rocked by murder. Mark Madger comes home from work to find
the body of his beautiful, young wife Nadine. Nadine, stabbed some 40 times, their baby Daniel beside her,
yet unharmed. Police quickly bring husband Mark in for questioning. The crime scene reveals many clues.
Detectives carefully preserve each item and begin piecing together just how Nadine Madger was murdered.
They had taken numerous items out of the apartment as evidence. One of the items was the drawer where they had
this butcher block cutlery set. There was a knife missing out of that block. They had taken the phone that was found
at the scene with blood on it. They did a great job collecting all of the items that they could find that looked like they might
have had some involvement. Because who knows what that might turn up years later?
She was wearing polyester pants. She was wearing a top, and she had these blue shoes on.
All of those items were collected as well too. Those items were later sent to our crime lab
and they were analyzed. They were able to find a drop of blood that was foreign to Nadine that eventually they were
able to test and determine that it came back to an unknown male. The original Willoughby police team
is impeccable in its investigation. DNA is not yet available at that time as a forensic tool,
but they successfully isolate the suspect's blood type. They also hope an autopsy will reveal more clues.
In examining the victim, we could see that she had been attacked from the front at this point.
A number of slashes across the face. There is no evidence that anyone entered any of the other rooms.
Everything was fairly well intact, as we could see it. The victim's purse was found lying
on a couch in the living room and all the papers were intact as well as her keys.
The checkbooks were found in the bedroom and they were not disturbed. The medical examiner was able to determine that Nadine
sustained a severed jugular artery and also had a perforated lung. Nadine put up a heck of a fight.
You could tell by the defensive wounds on her hands, the marks and blood all on the walls.
You could tell she was fighting for a while. NANCY GRACE: Very quickly detectives
establish how Nadine died. Now they've got to find the killer. Could it be her own husband Mark,
who is now in police custody? I told them, I said I'll take a polygraph test. So Sunday morning, they said will you
still take a polygraph test? I said, yes. At the polygraph test, the guy asked me the same questions
over and over and over again. It seemed like it lasted forever. I don't know, it was two or three hours.
I don't even know. And then several months after that, they asked me if I would take another one.
I said, yes, I would and I took another one. They didn't have anybody else at that moment so they wanted
to interview Mark and learn everything they could about Mark's day and about Nadine,
and the polygraphs were instrumental in determining if what he's telling the police was true or not.
In my mind, I could tell what was going on, and I couldn't get it out of my lips.
I felt I couldn't convince them that I didn't do it. I thought I'm going to jail for something I didn't do.
That's what I thought. But Mark Madger is not going to jail. Polygraph tests and police rule him out as a suspect,
at least for now. Some of Nadine's relatives are not convinced. They still consider Mark a suspect.
It was really awkward. The one sister thought for sure I'd killed Nadine, and she kept on making comments and stuff like that.
She wanted to hang me by my neck. I know she did. It was horrible. We went to Mount Olive Cemetery, which is in Solon, Ohio,
and I asked to get me a dozen yellow roses. That was her favorite colored rose. The rabbi took the flowers from me
and he broke off some of the petals and threw them on the casket, and then laid the rest of them
on the casket. And after they said whatever they said in Hebrew and so forth, they lowered the casket down to his level,
and they start throwing dirt on it. And I asked them to stop, and they did. And I bent down and I kissed the casket.
NANCY GRACE: Willoughby police do everything they can to find Nadine's killer, but their investigation stalls.
They were able to talk to a woman who lived on the third floor of Nadine and Mark's building.
She saw a canary yellow car parked right by the back door. It was believed that this was very possibly the vehicle
that the suspect arrived in. NANCY GRACE: For a short time, the lead about a yellow car
looks hopeful. But for now, it does not pan out. Detectives now take a new approach.
In a savage knife attack like this, the perpetrator is also injured as well, usually along the hands.
Police begin to contact local hospitals to find out has anyone been treated for wounds that may
have been caused by a knife? As I recall, there were about nine people, some of them,
the cuts were not where they should have been for somebody who was handling a knife
and had slipped. You know, it would be like across the fingers. NANCY GRACE: Time passes, the case seems
no closer to being solved. The local businesses in Willoughby step forward. They offer a $5,000 reward for information
leading police to the killer. Some residents are still convinced this vicious killer
is already known to detectives. There's a $5,000 reward out with her picture on their reward card, and they posted it in their stores.
There was no action, so obviously, they took the posters down after a while. I know my mom was playing bridge one time and there was a lady
and she was talking about the story in that how the husband, which is me, ran away
and they can't find him, and they think he's in Buffalo. And my mom said, that's really interesting
because he's living at my townhouse that we're sharing and that's my son. And she couldn't say anything.
She looked like a fool. But how many other people did she tell that to? How many other people told that story similar that I did it?
NANCY GRACE: Mark Madger knows he's got to put the murder of his wife Nadine behind him.
Not only for his sake, but for their son baby Daniel. Three years later, he remarries.
It looks like a new start, but it's very difficult for him to speak to his son Daniel about his mother's death.
I didn't talk about it a lot. It's very difficult to talk about. He may understand that.
He may not. I didn't find out what happened until probably 12 or 13 years later.
He told me that she was murdered. That was pretty much it. I mean, what do you tell a kid?
NANCY GRACE: Three years go by and eventually, detectives run out of leads. After 1983, it started really going cold.
They really worked that case hard for the first couple of years. And over time, without any new leads and any new advancements
in technology, it's just there wasn't anything else left to go on. It picked up again in the '90s.
I believe it was in 1996 was actually when they were able to identify that DNA profile.
And then Chief Straub had started up the task force after that, and they really pushed
hard with trying to identify new people and compare them with that profile that we had.
But again, it went cold probably a couple of years later until we picked up it again back in 2014.
When I was about 15 or so, I came to the conclusion that the case would never be solved.
I pretty much gave up hope in it. I figured there's no cameras back then, there's no witnesses.
There was no nothing. I don't want to say I put it out of my head completely, but I didn't dwell on it because I didn't think dwelling on it
would bring me any closure. NANCY GRACE: Baby Daniel Madger now growing into a man,
believes he may never find out what happened to his mother Nadine, but police never give up.
The arrival of a remarkable new forensic science known as investigative genetic genealogy
is blowing seemingly impossible cases wide open. Could it be the key to this case as well?
We find out next on "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: 1996, Willoughby, Ohio,
brand new DNA technology just might allow a blood sample found on Nadine Madger's
body to reopen her murder case. 16 years earlier, the young mom, found stabbed some 40 times.
For years, some in the community blame her husband Mark. However, police clear him.
After the case hit a brick wall, there wasn't a whole lot to do besides anytime someone
called in a tip they would pursue that, but nothing ever panned out. But in 1996, officers resubmitted Nadine's clothing
to the Lake County crime lab and this time for a DNA analysis. The crime lab was able to develop
a single source DNA profile from Nadine's shirt which was not her DNA. The officers working on it at that time thought this is it.
We're going to solve it. It was just another dead end. Because this DNA of the suspect was put into CODIS
and compared to all the DNA profiles in CODIS, but we never got a hit. It's a database of DNA profiles.
By submitting a new profile, it essentially takes a look at it, compared to all the other profiles
and determines if it's a match with one of the other ones in the database. The national database called CODIS is
made up of convicted criminals. A DNA sample from a crime scene must match another existing
sample in the database. The sample from Nadine Madger's shirt does not match anyone in CODIS, but it
does rule out Mark Madger once and for all as a suspect. I got involved in this case in 2014,
about a year after I had gone into our detective bureau. Read over the whole in case, really took a look
at the statements that were provided by Mark Madger to law enforcement at the time, looked at a lot of what our crime
lab had done for the case, started talking with our crime lab, our director at the time, because she
was very passionate about trying to solve this homicide. She was there that night helping collect evidence
with our police officers and detectives, so she was heavily invested in this case,
and she wanted to see it resolved. So we tried a lot of different approaches. We're re-contacted the Cleveland FBI
to get their behavioral science group back involved in it. We talked with other local agencies about similar cases
that they had to see if they could be connected with it. What I discovered was a lot of information
that one was similar to what the investigators back in 1980 had discovered, but it allowed me
to really get to know Mark and get to know what was going on in his life. I can't imagine how awful it was for him
and what he had been going through when people think that you're the suspect involved in this.
Your extended family probably considers you the suspect involved in this and the community.
His world was was completely wrecked at that time. I knew that we had a killer out there still on the loose,
that we still had a case that we needed to solve. And and we owed it to Mark and Danny
and the entire Cohen family to resolve this for them. NANCY GRACE: 2018, Willoughby detectives, now aware
of a remarkable new investigative tool called DNA phenotyping. They contact Parabon NanoLabs, a leader in the science,
for help. In February of 2018, our department contacted Parabon NanoLabs and gave them
some of the evidence from the crime scene, and they were able to find the suspect's DNA profile.
And the first thing they did for us was phenotyping. A snapshot phenotype is where we predict somebody's
physical traits from their DNA. So in this case, we were able to predict that the suspect was
Eastern European and had blue or green eyes, blonde or light brown hair, light skin with a few freckles.
So we knew we were looking for a white man of European ancestry with light traits.
They told us that the killer was a white male. They were not sure of an age of the person.
They gave us one when the suspect would be about 25 years old and one an age progression, where he'd
have been about 65 years old. First thoughts was that it sent a chill down my spine looking at I
could possibly be looking at the killer right now. Now that's just another tool to add to this whole puzzle
to try and figure out. And now we needed to start looking at DNA profiles to see if we can identify the killer,
and then maybe put these profiles with that. So once we receive that information that we knew now
what our suspect looked like, we were able to eliminate a lot of people from our suspect list.
We could get rid of any females on that suspect list. We could get rid of anybody with brown eyes or brown hair
who were not white males. So it cut the work down quite a bit. There's a lot of skepticism amongst some of the detectives
here about how accurate this could be. At that point, I thought it was the best information
we had to go on, so I believed in it and I wanted to work with it. NANCY GRACE: Detectives keep Mark Madger
informed of developments. We told them that we had contracted with Parabon NanoLabs and that we had developed this profile.
We had shown Mark the profile because one, we wanted to see if this person looked familiar to him.
It did not look familiar to him. He did not have anybody in mind that this might match up with,
but we wanted him to know this direction we were going. We talked about maybe doing a press conference
and putting this out there to the public to see if we could maybe develop some suspects that way.
He didn't want to get involved in that regard, but he was very supportive of this process
that we were moving forward. NANCY GRACE: The DNA phenotyping fails to find a suspect.
Parabon NanoLabs has one other possible approach that is solving seemingly impossible
cases all over the world. So when I started doing genetic genealogy almost 20 years ago, investigative genetic genealogy
wasn't a thing. In fact, we were focused on identifying long dead ancestors. That was really the exclusive use of genetic genealogy
originally. But then I decided to try to help adoptees and people who were looking for their biological fathers,
and that meant that the techniques needed to be adjusted. So instead of trying to find long dead ancestors,
we were now trying to find living or recently living individuals. That approach is what is now the basis for investigative genetic
genealogy and trying to use genetic genealogy to identify violent criminals and Jane and John Doe's.
When the SNP file was uploaded to GEDmatch and Family Tree DNA, we were incredibly disappointed
because the matches were extremely distant. There were no close cousins whatsoever.
So typically, I would tell the agency in a case like this that it's not viable for genetic genealogy.
But one of my team members named Stephanie really wanted to help Nadine's family get justice
and answers in this case. And so she agreed to work the case even with these incredibly distant matches.
The first report back to us from Parabon was that our case resulted in zero promising leads of second
to third cousins and zero promising leads of third to fourth cousins. So there was nobody in these genealogy website
databases that was a close relative of our suspect. At that point, I had never worked with genetic genealogy
so I really didn't know really what to make of it. I knew that we still had a lot of work to do.
Sometimes when we perform investigative genetic genealogy on a case like Nadine's, we can come up
with the name of a potential person of interest or a set of siblings very quickly.
Sometimes in hours or a couple of days. This case was very different. It took over two years of collaboration
between our genetic genealogist Stephanie and Detective Sleigh. Stephanie continued to build family trees
and was able to identify a family of interest that was living in the area of the crime.
Once we got a list of potential relatives of our suspect, which were very distant,
like fifth and sixth degree cousins, what we had to do is reach out to those relatives and kind of track
down their family tree and then contact their family members and try to get them to give us their DNA.
This is a great example of where it really took collaboration with the genetic genealogist
and the detectives traditional type investigation, where Stephanie would provide information to Detective
Sleigh, and then he would take that information and run with it. I made hundreds of phone calls and wrote letters to people
just trying to convince them to either give us their DNA, or if they have already put their DNA in one
of these websites, to enter it into GEDmatch, which would allow law enforcement to see their results
and to see if they were related to our suspect. NANCY GRACE: The odds of finding Nadine's killer this way
are very long, but they're shortening week by week. First, fifth cousins of the suspect are revealed.
Then fourth cousins, then third cousins. Gradually, the killer's identity is falling into focus.
Stephanie built the family trees of those distant matches and she actually did find a common ancestral couple.
What that meant was she located several individuals who shared DNA with our suspect, but also
shared DNA with each other. We work this tree back to the mid 1800s. We worked their family tree down to finding living descendants.
I would go out and contact these people and get their DNA or have them upload into GEDmatch.
I stumbled across a death record, which the last name matched the ancestral couple.
I gave that information to the genealogist, and she was able to work the family tree down
to a family that had members that lived in the Willoughby area in 1980. When the genealogists worked that family
tree down to present day, they found the last name Simcak. Once the genealogists came up with this family that lived
locally, the Simcak's, she said there were three brothers that were of the right age that
could possibly be the suspect. NANCY GRACE: Could one of the three Simcak brothers
be Nadine Madger's killer? Will his own family's DNA be used to identify him after over 30 years?
Finally, there's new hope in the investigation. This was the first time in the two years
that we were working on the case that we actually had a local connection to this family tree,
and I thought we were really on to something at this point. I was like, oh my gosh, so you're telling me that you're
closing in on this killer? And he's, yeah, we think we've identified him. Investigators feel they're on the verge of a breakthrough.
Can investigative genetic genealogy crack this case? That's next on "Bloodline Detectives."
[THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: 2018, Willoughby, Ohio, over 40 years since the day that changed
Mark Madger's life forever. In 1980, Mark comes home from work and finds his wife Nadine lying in a pool of her own blood
with multiple stab wounds. It's a near perfect crime except for one drop of blood
left behind by the killer. Now, this drop of blood is analyzed using investigative genetic genealogy.
Investigators build a family tree that points to three brothers all named Simcak.
Once the genealogists came up with this family that lived locally, the Simcak's, our prime suspect at that point
was Steven Simcak just based on where he lived. He had died in June of 2018. We found out that Steven Simcak had been cremated.
He was not buried, so we weren't able to get a sample of his DNA. It was very compelling when they
finally narrowed it down to a potential person of interest. He fit into the family tree that Stephanie had been building,
was related to these distant matches. His traits were consistent with the snapshot phenotype.
I started researching and found out that he had a grandson who died in 2015. I reached out to the Cuyahoga County
medical examiner, who did the autopsy on the grandson. They did take a DNA sample from the grandson,
and they gave me a portion of it. I brought that to our crime lab in Lake County
and had them compare it to our suspect DNA. Once he had learned of a possible name,
Detective Sleigh was not just going to rest on his laurels with that. He wanted to know everything else.
When I got the results a few days later, they were able to tell me that the suspect's DNA
and the grandson's DNA shared Y-STR DNA, and this was able to tell us that the suspect came from the same male
family line as the grandson. It's the breakthrough generations of Willoughby detectives have been seeking for decades.
Now, this group of investigators wants absolute proof Steven Simcak is without any doubt
the killer of Nadine Madger. That's next on "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC]
NANCY GRACE: Willoughby, Ohio, 2022. Detectives are certain they're closing in on the identity
of a man who savagely murdered beautiful, young mom Nadine Madger back in 1980. We didn't know who he was, so we started
looking into his background. One of the first places we went is to Lincoln Electric,
where he worked for 38 years. He worked there from 1963 up into 2002, and asked for any work records they had on him.
They still had all his work records from the entire time he worked there, and we found out
that the only day that he called off sick in 1980 was January 11th, the day of the murder.
To learn that Steven had called off sick for a second shift at Lincoln Electric that night
was very eerie. You put all these things together to develop this picture of what happened,
and all of these different pieces that investigators had collected over the years,
and to be able to put them together like this is just incredible. We conducted interviews of Steven
Joseph Simcak's children, stepchildren, any close friends of his. What we were able to determine through these interviews
is that in 1980, he drove a canary yellow Dodge Dart with a white vinyl top, which almost exactly matches
the vehicle that the woman from Nadine's building saw during the time of the murder.
We are also able to find out that prior to 1980, Steven Simcak was a heavy drinker, a very bad alcoholic.
And then for no reason, according to everybody, he stopped drinking right around 1980.
All these clues point to Steven Simcak as the killer, but police must be absolutely sure.
There's not a body to exhume. How will Bloodline Detectives find a way to make a solid DNA match?
So once I found out that our suspect in the grandson of Steve Simcak had the same Y-STR DNA,
I was very happy. I thought, man, we're so close. Parabon was able to tell me that the grandson of Steven
Simcak and our suspect shared almost 2900 centimorgans of DNA. They said the relationship possibilities
was siblings, which we knew was impossible due to the grandson's age. He was born in 1990, and it could have
been the grandson's father. We also knew that that was not possible due to his age.
He was born in 1966. And the last relationship possibility was grandchild grandfather.
At that point, we were now even more confident that our suspect was Steven Joseph Simcak.
We weren't able to get Steven Joseph Simcak's DNA. We knew he had a living son. I went and contacted the son and asked for a sample of his DNA.
He provided this to us. This DNA was compared at the Lake County crime lab and they said this is a parent sibling relationship.
This sample was also sent to Parabon, and they confirmed it, and they actually said with 100% probability,
it was a father child relationship. At that point, we knew Steven Joseph Simcak was
the person who killed Nadine. NANCY GRACE: 40 years later, every box is finally checked.
Nadine Madger's killer is identified. Police in Willoughby, Ohio, breathe a collective sigh of relief.
I don't remember how I acted. It was just kind of a rush of emotions came across me.
I was so happy for all of the people here that had been involved in it, that they have this closure.
But I was also really happy for Mark and Danny. Once we found out it was Steven Joseph Simcak,
I called Dan and Mark to come to the police department. I didn't tell them why. Just judging by the sound of Mark's voice,
I think he knew I was going to tell him something big, because he knew I was working on the case pretty hard.
And the chief came up and he met me. He said, are you Mr. Madger? I said, yes, I am.
And we were talking a little bit waiting for Danny to come. He says, well, we found the person who did it.
And I looked at him, and I says, he's dead, isn't he? And he said, yes. I just felt it because he didn't say we got him
or we were going to arrest him. So I just felt he had to be dead. So we went in, we looked at pictures
and so forth, and never knew the name, never knew the person. If I ever saw him maybe in passing,
if we walked down the sidewalk or something, I don't know. But I mean, what of those people are you going to remember?
Him dying before we could bring him to justice, I believe was a big failure on our part.
I feel we did not serve Mark and Danny Madger like we needed to. Like we owed it to them, and I felt
like we failed because we-- I wish we would have identified him earlier. I don't know if that was possible,
but I'm glad that Detective Sleigh was able to identify that and bring that information to the family
to bring them closure. But it's, you know, justice was never served unfortunately.
NANCY GRACE: Nadine Madger's killer finally identified. For husband Mark, it's not enough.
He still struggles with what he saw that January day back in 1980. For the first year after she was killed,
I had to look at a photograph of her to remember what she looked like. And it sounds stupid maybe, but that's the way it was.
I had nightmares. I was afraid to go to sleep. It was horrible. I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me.
I don't do that, but here's what this person did. He should have been executed. I should have been the one sticking the needle in his arm
and watching him die. He's a monster. I would have loved to have been there because he'd be a dead monster.
NANCY GRACE: Mark's son Daniel was in his crib when his mom Nadine is so cruelly murdered.
Of course, he doesn't remember the attack, but the memory of his mother is still with him.
The way her headstone is, it's low to the ground, it's on an angle. So a lot of times I will lay down and use it
as like a pillow, so to speak. I've taken naps there before on nice days. She's watching out for me.
You know, she's making sure trouble steers clear. Most precious memory? It's going to sound stupid.
The first time I met her mother. She's walking up the steps and she had a real pretty golden
dress on, and she turned around and smiled at me and she said, come on. NANCY GRACE: A heartbreaking end to a complex and painstaking
search for a brutal killer. It's a case that in all likelihood would never have been solved without the tenacity and
pioneering work of forensic investigative genetic genealogists, scientists, who believe there is no hiding
from your own family's DNA. It's very likely that this case never would have been solved without investigative
genetic genealogy. It was 40 years old, and they had already exhausted all of the avenues of investigation.
And because the suspect had already died, there was no deathbed confessions and probably
nobody left in the world who knew who was responsible for killing Nadine. One of the biggest things I take away from this case
is the fact that forensic genetic genealogy is available to law enforcement now.
And what's it going to be like in five years from now? I definitely think we're going to come to a point
where there's no such thing as a cold case, that we're going to be able to solve anything
where DNA was left behind. A single drop of blood preserved by police long before forensic science even existed.
A yellow car someone briefly saw near the crime scene. These were the seemingly small clues at the time
of Nadine Madger's murder. Thanks to incredible police work, the passage of time,
and amazing forensic science, those clues play a huge part in catching a killer 40 years later.
Amazing. I'm Nancy Grace. Thanks for being with us here on "Bloodline Detectives."
[THEME MUSIC]

Willoughby, Ohio, 1980, Mark Madger comes home to find his wife Nadine lying in a pool of her own blood, stabbed to death. Four decades later, cutting-edge DNA science provides answers the Madger family have been waiting a lifetime for.

Now in its fourth 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

The 1980 murder of Nadine Madger is solved using DNA technology decades later, identifying Steven Simcak as the killer.

Key points

The Gruesome Discovery. Mark Madger finds his wife Nadine brutally murdered in their home.
Community in Shock. Willoughby, Ohio, is rocked by Nadine's murder, leaving residents fearful.
A New Hope. Advancements in forensic science may finally lead to solving Nadine's murder.
A Killer's Identity Revealed. Detectives close in on Steven Simcak as the prime suspect in Nadine's murder.
The Breakthrough in Nadine's Case. Investigators finally identify Nadine Madger's killer after 40 years using genetic genealogy.
The Role of Forensic Genealogy. Forensic genetic genealogy proves crucial in solving a decades-old murder case.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I couldn't believe it.

Mark Madger's reaction to finding his wife Nadine dead.

0:33WatchAug 13, 2024

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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