The Murder on Elm Street | Bloodline Detectives with Nancy Grace | Forensic Files

[THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Carlsbad, New Mexico, 1987, a family member makes a terrible discovery.
I think her last moments were very violent. Mama knew a lot of people, and they all loved her.
Sometimes it just takes one moment to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. NANCY GRACE: Detectives work the case for years,
but they can't catch the killer. I'd pretty much given up hope. Just like following a trail of cookie crumbs,
and there was just no more crumbs. This is the story of a murder, a murder that goes unsolved
for decades, and an investigation taken up by a cold case team determined to crack the case.
The original investigators on this case were phenomenal. They were fantastic, and it was only
because of their diligence, we were able to pick this case up and move forward with it.
NANCY GRACE: Early advances in DNA technology cannot solve the case until the arrival of a new,
powerful scientific tool, investigative genetic genealogy. I think this is the most exciting
thing that's happened in 30 years to forensic science. From everything we have learned about him
was nothing short of evil. NANCY GRACE: Now criminals hiding in the shadows for years find there's no escaping science
and their own family's DNA. I'm Nancy Grace. This is "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC]
NANCY GRACE: Carlsbad, New Mexico, 1987. It looked much the same as it does today,
a friendly, desert town proud of its welcoming community and beautiful countryside.
Being in uniform patrol, I was highly visible and everything. And I adopted a habit of literally, rain or shine,
of always running around in that marked unit with the window down because I would
constantly get chastised for failing to say hi or wave to people. It used to be a lot different.
It was a lot better living here back in the days, more quaint town than it is now.
Now it's pretty busy. I mean, we're close to El Paso, the border, so we get a lot of drugs here.
Overall, it's not crazy like a big city, but it does have its times where we do have a lot of crimes.
We have been a, what you would say, a rapid growth explosion. Carlsbad has really changed.
It changes day to day, month to month, year to year. There's a community spirit here that runs deep.
I liken it to the fact that the Pecos River bisects the city. Psychologists say that if you have a community that
has a water feature in, by, or near that it produces a sense of unity. That unity however, is shaken the night of July 8, 1987.
That evening, the body of 38-year-old Donna Sue Hyatt is discovered. Donna Sue has two daughters Angie and Michelle,
and its 21-year-old Angie who discovers her mother's body. Angie had gone out that night and taken her son with her,
and then returned home after 11:00 and ultimately found her mother deceased in the floor.
From the report I read and then from talking to Angie a little bit, she was extremely upset.
She ran out of the house screaming, she went across the street. There was an actual neighbor that was
there and called the police. As I came down the street, I had a real bad feeling.
I remember dashing up the steps and inside, and it was immediately evident to me
that something horrific had happened. It was one of the worst I've ever encountered.
There was blood spatter splashed all the way around the room. She was lying on the floor.
She had on a yellow top that had been pulled up above her bustline in a state of semi nakedness.
When I viewed Donna Sue, the fluid I had suspicion was seminal. When I saw the stains, the blood,
I immediately said to myself, OK, this is going to require expert handling. DNA testing and collection was in its infancy.
It was pretty much cutting edge, so my major concern was that I keep the scene as sterile as I could.
Exactly-- I didn't want to even so much as move a speck of dust. And once I'd satisfied myself that I
had much more than an apparent suicide, then I just backed out and said, let's get the team in here.
The normal stuff on a crime scene was submitted. There was a smear on Donna that was a glistening.
I remember that was the exact words that the investigator used, that they did a swab of that,
which was very strange to me because it's 1987. We're not doing DNA. We're not doing that kind of stuff, and they swabbed that,
and they sent that into the lab also and it was secured. Mainly just for evidential collection,
you know, not really for the DNA testing like we use nowadays. NANCY GRACE: Donna Sue Hyatt lives on Elm Street
on the West side of town. She was at that time living with her adult daughter and her grandson were staying with her.
Speaking to her daughter, she was a good mom. She just wanted the best for them, like any other mom.
Mama loved music. She liked to listen to music. She liked to do crafts. She liked to work in the dress shops when she could.
I remember her cleaning house with her music, her records going. She liked Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton and contemporary gospel.
And she loved going to church. We'd go to church on Sunday with our grandparents.
That was always the highlight of the week was Sunday morning. She had a lot of things happen to her, marriages that ended
in deaths of husbands, and she had seizures that were pretty frequent from what we had learned.
She had epilepsy, and it made it really hard for her to work sometimes, and she didn't have a driver's license because of it.
So it was hard for her to get around. But from everything that we learned about her,
she didn't let that drag her down. We learned that she was a very happy, vibrant person.
Very outgoing and very welcoming and very kind to everybody. NANCY GRACE: After securing the crime scene,
investigators transferred Donna's body to the coroner in nearby Albuquerque. The autopsy sheds more light on Donna Sue Hyatt's final hours.
She had head trauma. Her hyoid bone, which is your bone here on your throat, it was broken, so they could definitely
tell she was strangled. She had been raped. She was very bruised, beaten, very bloody.
NANCY GRACE: A homicide investigation is launched. Detectives begin to gather evidence
and they try to learn more about Donna Sue Hyatt and her daily routine. The officers who were backtracking Donna's events
in that day learned that she had been to the salon that day, she had gotten her hair done,
she had went to lunch with a friend who was in town, and just basically kind of backtracked her day
to see who all her involvement had been with in the last 24 hours. Detectives quickly make an astute observation.
There is evidence at the crime scene suggesting Donna Sue Hyatt shared a drink with someone
in her home the evening of her murder. On the table, it appeared to detectives who arrived on scene, that there had been more than just Donna
in her house that evening. There were, in fact, two glasses of Coke that had been poured.
Along with the Coke on the table was a fried pie from a convenience store, and then they ultimately
found a receipt, which began their timeline for tracking the night's events. And they found that Donna had gone to the store.
It had the time that she had gone to the store, which was there at approximately 9:30 or so.
She had entered the store with a male. He was a light skinned, brownish blonde hair, very tall,
broad shoulders, kind of scruffy looking is how he was described. The store clerk said that he knew the guy wasn't from there
because he had come in earlier, bought some cigarettes, and then he also tried to buy some beer,
but they didn't sell beer there. And so he figured he probably wasn't from there.
He was with Donna, and Donna, I remember from some of the witnesses saying that Donna
was like talking to him like she was going to buy him something. What do you want?
And he was like whatever, I don't care. One witness I remember reading said that Donna seemed
persistent, like she wanted to get him something, and then she got a Coke, and then he got a Coke.
And then they went up to the front and bought the Cokes, bought the pie, and they left together.
The two witnesses said it seemed weird. The guy seemed kind of strange. JOEY LANDGRAF: They had a sketch made up of that individual
to the best of their abilities and they, of course, distributed it. My summary was that she had gone to the store,
picked up a snack, possibly either met or had made arrangements to have a visitor.
It would appear that she maybe had invited the individual into the house and something snapped.
That was my first suspicion based on the blood spatter, the furniture placements,
her clothing disarray. It almost looked like she spurned someone's advances and they attacked.
Who is the fair haired stranger police believe followed Donna Sue Hyatt home? We find out next on "Bloodline Detectives."
[THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: 1987, Carlsbad, New Mexico, detectives investigating the brutal rape
and murder of a 38-year-old mom of two, Donna Sue Hyatt. They know the night Donna Sue is murdered she's in the company
of a fair haired man. Now detectives ask the FBI for help. The FBI had a unit they referred to
as the behavioral science unit. They had highly trained individuals in different disciplines that could take our case files
and build a psychological profile based on evidence and circumstances and things that we could supply to them
to give us direction of what type of person might possibly be involved. They said that he was kind of like a loner,
liked his mom a lot, almost like a mama's boy. They said if he was in the military,
he wouldn't have been good in the military. He would probably most likely had a dishonorable discharge.
He was kind of not like a very social person. Really kept to himself. NANCY GRACE: With the FBI profile,
local law enforcement begins interviewing potential suspects. I think any time things like this happen, of course,
you look at people that are going to fit the profile that potentially either have a previous record
or have committed similar incidents of that type. If you can hopefully make a connection to a victim
or make a timeline that puts them in the area at the time, they're going to have to be a person of interest.
Looked at a lot of people in town. They looked at 20 some suspects they looked at overall.
When Donna Sue's funeral happened, they looked at those people and who came because sometimes
a killer will show up you at something like that, especially at the victim's funeral or back at the scene.
NANCY GRACE: Years pass, the investigation remains open, but the chances of identifying Donna Sue Hyatt's killer
are fading. As the years went on, occasionally a new detective would come into the force and open the case and contact us,
and we'd always hoped something would happen. But after a while, I'd honestly kind of given up really.
I figured that I'd probably never know, that we would probably never know. All of those years, it just ate at me.
The trail and the case and the circumstances, everything just went cold. It's just like following a trail of cookie crumbs
and there was just no more crumbs. The cold case detectives are finding important clues hard to come by but new science is
now coming into play. By the late '90s, 10 years after Donna Sue's murder, DNA forensic technology is advancing.
It is now possible to create a unique profile based upon evidence from a crime scene.
In this case, it is male body fluid left behind by the killer. The key piece of evidence that was located
was that semen sample that was swabbed and ultimately sent to the New Mexico state lab, where
that sample of the suspect DNA was uploaded into the CODIS system. NANCY GRACE: CODIS is the United States combined DNA system,
a national database of DNA profiles from convicted offenders, unsolved crime evidence,
and some missing people. The US would nationalize a system called CODIS based on kind of a newer version that DNA testing.
But even then, that wouldn't have been helpful in solving the crime unless the person responsible had already
been convicted of another crime and had been entered into the database. And so it took both the advent of advanced testing
but then also the exhaustive testing of people that have been known to commit a crime
before they can start piecing those relationships together. And in this case, Donna's killer never ended up in CODIS.
NANCY GRACE: This is yet another setback for investigators, but it is by far not the end of the story.
Another decade goes by. In May 2020, a new cold case team takes over the case. I actually took the case off of a shelf.
I was working another case, and I went in the back into the records, and I saw this case, and I thought, well,
what the heck? So I pulled it off the shelf, I started reading the case. It was very interesting.
What really stood out to me is how good these other investigators were back then.
They followed everything to the end. They didn't stop until literally it just went cold.
I mean, there was nothing to go on for what they had at that time. Two detectives came by my house,
and they said, do you remember this case? And I said, oh, yeah. And they told me, he said, yes, we've read your report,
and we're reopening the case. I was ecstatic. I was literally over the moon. NANCY GRACE: The new cold case team
looks at all the old evidence, then they take advantage of a new forensic science that
goes far beyond phenotyping that provides a profile of the suspect. My partner had come across Parabon lab
and we were trying to determine some descriptors of our suspect. So in researching that, ultimately he located Parabon,
and we were able to send a sample of our DNA to Parabon and get that descriptor of what our suspect would
have looked like. He was of European descent. He was fair complected, probably freckly.
He had strawberry blonde or dirty blonde hair, and he would have been tall. Ultimately, we took that and the old sketch that had originally
been done and had a new sketch done of what we had found out. NANCY GRACE: All that's missing now
to identify the so-called fair haired man is his name. For that, detectives turn to a new ground breaking
technique, science that is solving seemingly impossible cases. That technique, investigative genetic genealogy.
They came to me in early 2022, told me that they were really picking up the case and really looking at it hard again,
that they had made some really good progress. But that it was coming to a point where they felt like-- they wanted to prepare me that there
might be some things that might come down to genealogy, investigative genealogy, and involving
DNA evidence that was recovered from the original scene. We talked about what all that would entail,
the testing that would have to occur in that. We didn't really stop to really think about the monetary cost.
Even though it had to be discussed, I don't think that was ever a roadblock for us
moving forward in the case. Will Donna Sue Hyatt's killer be identified after 30 long years?
Next on "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: The unsolved rape and murder of Donna Sue Hyatt
is now over 30 years old, but cold case investigators are lucky because detectives at the time
of the murder very carefully preserved crucial evidence. The most important evidence, male bodily fluid
from Donna Sue Hyatt's killer. Now, a brand new generation of Bloodline Detectives
are using investigative genetic genealogy to blow this case wide open. I actually talked to an FBI agent
that I knew, who actually worked with me on another case, and he told me, hey, these guys are phenomenal.
You should reach out to them, and so I did. I think that this new technology is the most exciting thing that's happened in 30 years.
In the last 30 years, there's really not been anything as nearly as exciting as this forensic genetic genealogy, which
now for the first time can use DNA to find people that are tied to a crime scene, but even without the need
to use a database like CODIS or without the need to actually have folks that are already
suspects or people of interest. NANCY GRACE: So how exactly does this new investigative
technique solve crimes? Forensic genetic genealogy is an interesting application
of genetic genealogy. Genetic genealogy came into existence about 20 years ago and was a field that emerged from a combination
of an interest in genealogy and the pursuit of genealogical records that could help build out family trees.
And the need to essentially remove the ambiguities when the names are wrong on a public record,
or when there's confusion about the same surname, for example, is part of that family or not.
And so DNA testing and genome wide testing became a valuable tool to essentially
refine people's observations of the genealogical space. And that combination of DNA testing and genealogy
became known as genetic genealogy. Forensic genetic genealogy is the application
of that approach using genealogy and using genetics to identify relationships, but to do this
in a forensic context, which means that you're focusing on a forensic investigation, usually the identification
of a victim or the identification of a suspect in a crime and the need to work from DNA
material that is imperfect. In genetic genealogy, that information that you're gathering comes from a buccal swab
or from saliva that is coming from a living person. They may have tested last week, and so there's lots of DNA.
It's fresh. It's high quality. Forensic DNA is a lot more complicated than that.
There's usually very little DNA. It's chemically damaged. It's degraded. There could be multiple contributors.
There could be non-human components, like bacteria and other things that are kind of mixed in.
And so it's just simply a more challenging starting point from which to do the work.
The team then uses a technique known as forensic grade genome sequencing. Forensic grade genome sequencing
is a sequence of processes that are used for us to prepare the DNA for our type of sequencing technology,
and then sequence the DNA to create a high performing DNA profile that can be uploaded to genealogical databases
in order to get the matches necessary to identify someone, or can be used for detailed biogeographical analysis
or any other technique necessary to get the investigative information that you need to return
back to the detectives and allow them to move their case forward. From the case file, looked pretty typical of what
we've seen for sex assault cases, and we said that we would give it a shot. And so we sent them over the shipping instructions,
unique barcode to assign their evidence to our case. I sent them the actual swab that
was taken from the smear of Donna Sue Hyatt's thigh and kind of stomach area, and I sent that
to Othram to have it tested. We worked very closely with the Carlsbad Police on this case.
It was very important to them to know at every step kind of where we were getting.
If things were moving in the right direction, and so we were very excited to tell them
at the conclusion of the laboratory part, that we had successfully built a DNA profile
and that it was a high quality profile and ready for that next step, which is the genealogical research investigation.
In this case, we were working with the FBI, so our profile was sent to the FBI, and they are the ones that did the genealogy.
Here's how the FBI does it. The suspect's DNA is linked to profiles from existing family
DNA databases. This delivers hits to several distant relatives of the suspect. Very soon, the list of names is narrowed down
to one close family member of the suspect they believe murdered Donna Sue Hyatt.
Through matching and through the genealogy and stuff, we were able to figure out that there was a family member.
The family's name was Wigley. NANCY GRACE: Police discover two brothers with the surname
Wigley were living in Carlsbad, New Mexico at the time of the murder. Ultimately, we were able to get the suspect sister's DNA
and find out that they were 100% biological sibling matches to our suspect. NANCY GRACE: Detectives quickly tracked down
one of the Wigley brothers. I had gotten DNA from him and sent it directly to the New
Mexico state lab for testing, and he was eliminated as our suspect. We knew there was only one other brother and that
would be Michael Ruff Wigley. NANCY GRACE: Michael Ruff Wigley moves from being a person of interest to becoming the prime suspect.
He did live in Carlsbad at a period of time further back than the 80s. He went to high school in Eunice.
He went to the military. He was kind of a loner. He was very tall, very thin, very fair complected,
kind of reddish hair. Things that were said about our suspect, of course, turned out to be very much true.
You know, somebody who may have been in the military and then ultimately been expelled from the military,
had problems with women and ultimately, that's what we found. Michael Ruff Wigley had actually been arrested and charged
in Coppers Cove, Texas, for the rape of a young woman, who had come into a police department
and asked for directions. He had been himself at the police department requesting a copy of a report.
Ultimately, he went outside, he waited for this young lady to exit the police department.
He grabbed her, he drug her into the alley. He beat her severely. He raped her. And then he threatened to kill her if she told anyone.
She did come forward, she notified police. She made a report. She was terrified.
She did not want to pursue charges. We then kept digging into Michael and we located that he had been the sole person of interest
and a suspect in a homicide of one of his neighbors back in the same time. A young lady went missing, her decomposing body was found
naked, and she had been beaten. She suffered blunt force trauma, died as a result of it,
and ultimately, he had been seen walking away with her. And he was the last person seen with her.
Due to decomposition of her body, they couldn't obtain enough evidence to go after Michael
Ruff Wigley for that. They went back to the original rape victim, told her about the homicide that they believed he was involved
in, she then agreed to move forward and proceed with charges against him. Ultimately, he was convicted and he spent
just under six years in prison. Detectives now face a new roadblock in arresting
Michael Ruff Wigley. After his release from prison in 1989, he's killed when his car fails to give
way to an oncoming train. The impact carries his vehicle over half a mile. He dies at the scene.
Wigley had died in 1989, which would explain the reason why our CODIS DNA never got a hit.
Because we knew two things about our suspect, either he committed this one crime
and moved on and never done anything ever again, or he had died and that was the reason we
weren't getting a hit in CODIS. Knowing that he died shortly after he killed my mama,
I'm glad for that because that means that's fewer people he hurt along the way. Sounds like he had a pretty bad death and that's OK too.
NANCY GRACE: Still, detectives and Donna Sue Hyatt's family want definitive proof Michael Ruff Wigley is her killer.
The Bloodline Detectives must match his DNA with male bodily fluid left at the murder scene.
It just felt like the case was moving forward and getting closer and closer to being closed.
It was a tentative match, and I crossed my fingers, and I was holding my breath.
And I got notification from the detectives that there was going to be an exhumation
in Texas of the body. But will this tentative DNA match hold up after Michael Ruff Wigley's body is exhumed?
We find out next on "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Carlsbad, New Mexico, 2023.
Detectives are so close to solving the 1987 rape and murder of a young mom, Donna Sue Hyatt.
Thanks to investigative genetic genealogy, they have the name of a man they believe
is the killer, Michael Ruff Wigley. Wigley is a man with a very long criminal history.
He's also dead, killed in a traffic accident in 1989. Investigators must exhume Wigley's body in Texas
to match his DNA to biological evidence left at the murder scene. We wanted to make sure we got 100% match,
that this was our suspect. When we got the search warrant to exhume Michael Ruff Wigley once he was identified
as our suspect for certain-- NANCY GRACE: Detective Nyce called my aunt and my aunt
called me, and then I called Detective Nyce to get the details. And he told me that they were going to exhume the suspect.
And then I believe it was October when they managed to do that, to exhume him. When the body was exhumed in Amarillo,
we took Michael from Amarillo to Lubbock, and we took him to a forensic pathologist.
His femur bone was removed from his left leg, and then six of his teeth were removed also.
It was sent to Othram and they did the sample. NANCY GRACE: Othram's based in Texas.
It has an incredible track record of cracking cold cases using investigative genetic genealogy.
We can take the skeletal remains, we can isolate a small piece of the remains, a little fragment,
and from there, pull enough DNA to be able to then identify that person. We were very excited to share the news that we
were able to build a profile. This is the first time that Carlsbad had attempted
to work on this method. This ended up being the first publicly announced case of the FBI helped sort out genealogically,
and so there was a lot of firsts here, and we were excited. It's very important as we're trying to encourage
the broad adoption of this method, that especially if it's your first or second time, that you
have a good experience. So making sure that we were able to deliver them a good outcome
was important. And we were able to get 100% match to the suspect DNA that was left on Donna Sue Hyatt's body.
NANCY GRACE: The murder case of Donna Sue Hyatt is solved, but now Bloodline Detectives think her killer
may have murdered other women. Next on "Bloodline Detectives." [THEME MUSIC] NANCY GRACE: Carlsbad, New Mexico, 2023, a suspect,
now dead, named Michael Ruff Wigley has been identified as the man who raped and murdered
Donna Sue Hyatt in 1987. Wigley has a long criminal record. Detectives now hoping investigative genetic genealogy
will link Wigley to the unsolved murders of even more young women. I'm actually surprised that we haven't had any more
hits on his DNA in CODIS. He is still listed as unknown DNA at this time as a suspect DNA, and we're
hoping that we can get that changed and add his name to that DNA. The highlight of this case for me
was when Michelle and Angie came in and sat down with Detective Nyce and just to know that they
finally had an answer. I called them in to the Carlsbad Police Department. We met in a briefing room.
I met with Michelle Perry, the older daughter of Donna Sue, and I met with Angie, the younger daughter,
and then Michelle's husband. I told them that we got 100% match. I was able to actually give them the readout
and explain how it worked from Othram. And I told them, you know, I had a picture of Michael.
They weren't interested in that, of course. It was a relief. I mean, it doesn't change anything that happened
by any means, but it is a relief because it's something you think about all the time.
I'm sure that the whole community is somewhat relieved because anyone who knew her always wonders.
It was a shock to everyone, not just my family. The way I look at it is is you should never give up
because there's always a chance you could give closure to a family and help them.
To finally put a name to who killed their mom, I think, yeah, definitely. In order to give closure to my victims,
I always tried to give, where possible, an explanation and the why that this happened.
Even as abstract or heinous as it may be, I felt a duty to my victims to be able to say this is why this
happened, or at least, I could say this is why I suspect this something happened.
I think that Donna Sue befriended a guy while she was walking, and I think Michael is, what I've learned
through my investigation, that he was kind of a slick talker in the fact that he was friendly to people.
And Donna was friendly to people, and I think they talked, they walked, they went to the Circle K.
I think he convinced Donna that he was somebody that he wasn't, and her being who
she was, because she was a very kind woman, I think in his convincing her of who
he was, he walked back from the Circle K to her residence with her. She invited him in and then ultimately, I
think he made a pass at her and she squashed that very quickly, which enraged him.
She was a very small, petite woman. He was very tall. He would have towered over her.
And the first hit pretty well knocked her unconscious. The doctor even speculated that maybe she
would have gone into a seizure, and then he continued to beat her. And I don't think at any time that she could even fight back.
I think she had been hit and beaten to the point where that capability no longer existed for her.
It may not even be a sexual nature, but it's about control over somebody. And ultimately, somebody who's just, in all honesty, I
think an evil person. The Bloodline Detectives are now solving cold cases more than 50 years old.
Of course, forensic science is the major reason for that, but there's another ingredient needed for that amazing science
to work. I can't thank those original detectives enough, and the police officers that secured the scene
and took care of everything. For them to have the wherewithal, the determination,
to collect every piece of evidence and that have been collected, that was it. That was the key piece of evidence that solved the case.
I can't say enough. All the credit really goes to the investigators in this case.
Because without their dedication, without their passion, without their determination
to see this thing through, then we wouldn't be sitting here today. NANCY GRACE: Investigative genetic genealogy
is solving cases that were previously deemed unsolvable. There was an old adage that I used to use when I was training
my people, and that was is that people lie, but evidence never does. It can be misinterpreted, but it never lies.
My daughters never got to know her. My sister's kids never got to know her. I tell them about when we were young and how much fun she was.
And we look at pictures. They see pictures of her. We share those all the time. She would be at the birthday parties,
you know, she would be at all of the family events. She would be a big part of it.
The incredible science of investigative genetic genealogy is also creating a new type of justice.
It's inevitable that when a case is as old as Donna Sue Hyatt's, the actual perpetrator may be dead.
In those cases, forensic science can link that perpetrator to his crimes even after death, but yet, it
can never bring him to trial. For the families of victims and for investigators that means
there's yet another definition of so-called closure. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for joining us here on "Bloodline Detectives."
[THEME MUSIC]

1987, Carlsbad, New Mexico, the body of 38-year-old Donna Hyatt is discovered by her daughter. Two empty glasses of cola suggest she had company the night before. It will take another 36 years to identify the perpetrator.

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

Investigative genetic genealogy identifies Donna Sue Hyatt's killer, Michael Ruff Wigley, in her 1987 murder case after decades of investigation.

Key points

The Discovery of a Murder. In 1987, the body of 38-year-old Donna Sue Hyatt is discovered, leading to a chilling investigation.
Cold Case Team Takes Over. After decades, a new cold case team reopens the investigation into Donna Sue's murder.
Advancements in Forensic Science. New techniques in forensic science, including investigative genetic genealogy, offer hope in solving the case.
Michael Ruff Wigley Identified. Detectives identify Michael Ruff Wigley as the prime suspect in the murder of Donna Sue Hyatt.
Exhumation of Suspect's Body. Investigators exhume Wigley's body to match DNA with evidence from the murder scene.
DNA Match Confirmed. A 100% DNA match confirms Wigley as the killer of Donna Sue Hyatt.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I think her last moments were very violent.

0:19WatchMay 24, 2024

Tension

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