Who Murdered Roxanne Wood? | Bloodline Detectives with Nancy Grace | Forensic Files

foreign [Music] Niles Michigan 1987 Terry Wood comes home to find his wife Roxanne dead on
the kitchen floor she's covered in blood when he arrived he saw her laying on the
floor he saw a large pool of blood on the floor he saw that her neck had been cut although Terry Wood finds his wife
Roxanne and calls police he quickly becomes the number one suspect they're the last person that saw them
they're the first person that discovered them with no eyewitnesses and not much evidence the case quickly goes cold
police have only one hope left a groundbreaking tool genetic genealogy genealogy and fat advanced in science is
what got us to where we are here today The Killers DNA sample is in very bad condition however raising doubts that
bloodline detectives can crack the code just like dealing with a puzzle piece where lots of pieces are missing
after Decades of waiting for justice there's only one forensic tool and one hope left to identify the killer of
Roxanne wood I'm Nancy Grace this is bloodline detectives [Music] [Applause] [Music]
Niles Michigan a small City located just over the state line from South Bend Indiana it's a quiet place to live
all in all it's really just a blue collar Town family oriented nice place to live actually
on the night of February 20 1987 Roxanne wood and husband Terry are out with friends
Terry and Roxanne have been married for about five years they both had steady jobs lived in a
nice neighborhood had a nice house had a couple pets and no children however they were
talking about having children when Roxanne was killed they went out with some friends
they went to dinner then they went to the bowling alley where a lot of Terry and Roxanne's friends were playing in a
league Roxanne left the bowling alley prior to Terry at at the most about 45 minutes before
him she went directly home by all indications Terry comes through the garage he shuts the garage he goes in the house
and he looks and sees his wife laying there on the kitchen floor [Music] approaches her when he kneels down he
sees there's pool of blood he lifts her head up and notices a gaping wound under her neck
he saw her laying on the floor he saw blood a large pool of blood on the floor he saw that her neck had been cut
as he went to check on her and called 9-1-1 he did check for a pulse at the recommendation of dispatch did not have
a pulse he noticed that there was a knife sheath on the floor and relayed that to the dispatchers well obviously
he was he was in shock in the 911 dispatcher was trying to keep him focused and wait for the Troopers to arrive at
the scene which ultimately they did Mr wood greeted them at the door he was obviously covered in blood because he'd
gone over and had held his wife when they walked in they also observed Roxanne laying on the floor a puddle of
blood around her also observed was there was a frying pan that was on the kitchen
floor there was a handle that was in the sink when they investigated a little bit
further they also found a back door that was standing a jar with a droplet of blood on it
her underwear is pulled down over her buttocks and it appears that maybe she was raped so what they did is they
locked it down crime scene texts get there and continue to go through the process of checking for evidence they
were able to get Terry away from the house foreign [Music] like this one it's standard operating
procedure the first person police look at is the spouse in this case Roxanne Wood's husband Terry
[Music] Terry was kind of animated and maybe a little bit tipsy from drinking they were
able to bring him down to the station and our detective surgeon at the time took him up to his office and began to
interview interview wasn't recorded so we don't have the luxury of viewing that interview but from the interview that
was transcribed into notes he was very emotional he was adamant that he had nothing to do
with the death of Roxanne and just very very emotional [Music] Terry said some strange things in the
interview that put some red flags up for the detective Sergeant I know he mentioned something about the amount of
blood that he saw and how long it would take for someone to die to expel that amount of blood and that seemed to the
detective that wasn't something and someone would even fathom of saying under those circumstances one of Terry's
family members came rushing into the lobby of the station and and yelled up to the detective's office and said don't
say anything we got an attorney so that kind of sets off another red flag he had retained an attorney so at that
point the interview stopped police secure the crime scene and hope that Roxanne Woods autopsy provides
Clues [Music] the autopsy revealed that Roxanne had a contusion on the right side of her head
and also a bruise on her right shoulder the frying pan was broken because the suspect struck Roxanne
with that frying pan also it showed two slash marks one completely around her neck and one that started and
stopped sexual assault kit was conducted at the time of the autopsy and sent to the
Michigan State Police lab and processed from that and elimination there had been
some seminal fluid found within her and on her clothing Roxanne wood is the victim of a brutal
sex attack her assailant has left potential evidence a DNA sample off his semen found on and in Roxanne's body
I mean it put a black cloud over to town I am confident that there are young girls that grew up at that time
that went to bed scared at night without a dog a young wife brutally sex attacked then
murdered a community living in fear there's a rapist and a killer on the loose and police have only one potential
suspect that's next on bloodline Detectives foreign [Music] Michigan 1987 police investigating the
brutal murder of 30 year old Roxanne wood their only person of interest Roxanne's own husband who actually makes
a 9-1-1 call the night of her murder Roxanne's husband Terry Wood well you definitely look at it with
suspicion I mean obviously he's got the right to to come and speak to the police
or not to come and speak with the police but it definitely you look at it with a
different I think a different perspective of okay why why is this why does he not want to
talk to us everybody thought Terry did it but there wasn't anything to move forward I
believe they submitted to the prosecutor but there just wasn't enough evidence to
arrest Terry police do not have enough evidence to charge Terry Wood so they began to look
at other theories for Roxanne's brutal murder they were looking at individuals that
could could have committed the crime but they were looking at individuals that knew her interviews were conducted of
everybody that was at the bowling alley that night a neighborhood canvas was conducted back in the neighborhood where
this occurred where she was living to determine if anybody saw anything or heard anything
it was all over the news the neighboring agencies all knew what was going on believed they did look at all the sex
offenders in the area and still weren't able to to pinpoint one particular person even being near
that residence there were a lot of different suspects you know none of them that took all the
heat away from Terry everybody was a suspect not to the extent of Terry but everybody was pretty
much a Suspect with it we we didn't have any idea I think once All Leads and no tips were coming in everybody had been
that they knew could be interviewed they've been interviewed it went stale pretty pretty quick they continued to be
worked on by the detective at the time but there's only so much information that that he could go on
so from 87 until 2001. it's pretty much dead in the water police have a case rapidly going cold so
they seek an unusual source for help a local University Professor named Ashland Kirsten and her students
in the 80s you know a lot of it is handwritten and so we needed to turn all of these evidence boxes into one primary
document that a busy detective could just pull it up on on the screen of his phone and then do a search for whatever
A variation on a person's name a partial license plate number partial phone number whatever they needed at that time
and be able to do it on their phone in real time and and that's what my team did
so we were able to have a a scanner like a regular traditional scanner but we were able to use the special software
that was able to recognize the characters in the words in these documents so basically we were able to
feed these papers into a scanner and the software was able to take the words that
were on the page and make them digital words we could hit one button and search any name in
that entire report and that report consisted of three thousand six hundred plus pages
with the help of Professor Kirsten and her students police now study the main piece of evidence from the crime scene
from reading through the reports I learned that Roxanne was on her period her menstrual cycle we knew that Roxanne
had a pad when she was killed it was stuck in her underwear the semen deposit was in the pad
and it wasn't a mixture it was a single source which means that Roxanne came home took her tampon
out put a pad on and then within minutes before going to bed because she was in her night clothes ready for bed
she was attacked and sexually assaulted the evidence from the rape kit was re-examined at that time by our lab in
Grand Rapids at that point they were able to obtain a profile and they entered it into CODIS
and essentially that is continually searched through CODIS for arrestees and the resty database in the process of
doing that when the Cold Case team came in because of this being relatively new they essentially started taking DNA
swabs or buccal swabs from potential Witnesses potential suspects anybody they received a tip on that would be
willing to to submit to these DNA Buckle swabs Professor Kirsten and her students
police now determine Roxanne Woods menstrual pad could hold vital evidence to identify her murderer
we obtained Buckle swabs from over 60 people back then to compare to the known sample that we had and in all
of those that we did we did not have any hits we even went as far as to contact the local paper as well as the media
and said that if anybody has had a relationship with Roxanne let us know we will be discreet and we
just need to know who that person was the DNA results tell police everything they need to know about their number one
suspect husband Terry Wood I grabbed the file I got the okay from the detective Sergeant to look at it
you know to really spend some time with it when I was done I said to myself Terry didn't do it
the original investigators based a lot of their Direction towards theories and how you would think
someone would act and it kind of wasn't fair if you want to look at it you know just
based on the evidence what what I I did was I let the evidence lead to the murderer
and one of the big things that we had problems with was the DNA and Roxanne had DNA on her that was not teres
[Music] number one suspect cleared by forensic science available at that time but as we
see next a revolutionary new tool called genetic genealogy will emerge as a critical weapon for bloodline Detectives
oh [Music] Niles Michigan 2021 police investigating the sex assault and brutal murder of Roxanne
wood all the way back in 1987. police have sort through the CODIS National Database but find no matches
now cops consider the possibility of a revolutionary forensic tool genetic genealogy but there's the catch the only
DNA sample they have may be two degraded to produce results I had actually myself had called up to
the lab asking about the DNA and then what was left of it because at the time everything in Michigan was transforming
from paperwork to digital and just how air stuff was being stored how they were going to store it in proper procedures
and at that time I was told that DNA had been used up and there was nothing left
the case can't go anywhere without knowing who that DNA belonged to John had called me and said I want to
pick up the Roxanne wood case and work it is is that okay and I said absolutely but if we're going to work it we got to
work it as hard as we can because the family once they hear we're working this again
they're going to have some element of of Hope here in this as well look through the case for all looked at
the evidence looked at what we got back from the lab and in 2017 we got a new computer system Statewide
and so all the evidence had to be placed from hard copies into this new system and in the process
the extracts that were kept from all the analysis got lumped into one sealed package everybody thought we didn't have
them you know they didn't exist but they did and I found it sometimes it's a combination of luck and
old school detective work that provides a Lifeline for the bloodline detectives and that's what happens when detective
John Moore miraculously finds one last shred of DNA evidence we were able to find some minuscule
amount of DNA left that we were able to send away for forensic genealogy we knew with the sample that there was a
potential it was going to get absorbed by the test so we wouldn't have any left but it was to a point where you know we
had to try something we hired identifinders and Dr Colleen Fitzpatrick her company
to do the genealogy testing for us investigate ideology all so called forensic genetic
genealogy is ideology to Cold Case work in other words genealogists have been using DNA
to identify adoptees for a long time for a couple of decades now all those techniques we've used to identify the
birth parents of adoptees are now being applied to cold cases because in the long run it doesn't matter if you're an
adoptee that is you don't know who you are or the DNA comes from say a violent offender a DNA left at a crime scene or
DNA from a John or Jane Doe you have DNA and you don't know whose DNA it is so the techniques from there can be applied
to any of those situations initially when when we sent it out there we were we were hopeful because we knew
how powerful the genealogy tool was and could be it had been around for for some
time now we have been using it for our unidentified remains cases and had great success with that
it was actually an email sent to us in 2020 about the Roxanne wood so we start talking to you about it we
were in the middle of covid and we you know took a long time to say find the records find what DNA samples were
available it was a very difficult case with very low level degraded DNA foreign after we had sent it out to the
company and they did their initial work on it we were on a video conference call
and during that call Dr Fitzpatrick was not very positive with us about the state and the degradation of the sample
degraded DNA means pieces of DNA it's fragmented it's like a puzzle with big pieces missing this was the last chance
it took us nine months of careful discussion on what to do with this DNA because it was the last hope of solving
the case at that point then the team Jason Bailey and John Moore and myself we were
you know we we weren't as hopeful at that point we like to work with a nanogram of DNA
which is a billionth of a gram of DNA and it turned out we we got down to 30 picograms which is about what three
percent of that and the value of only a few cells in the body it very small amount
the DNA sample is badly degraded Colleen Fitzpatrick and her team wonder if it will work
all humans are basically 90 something percent the same so even if you have fragmented DNA sometimes you can
reconstruct some of the missing pieces because you know what humans look like you know what a human genome is so you
can deduce some of the missing pieces which is part of what we did to kind of get the thing to move forward
a couple of weeks later we get a call from Dr Fitzpatrick where it had totally flipped 180 degrees they were hopeful
now that they were going to be able to make a match she never gave up we never gave up and
she had contact with the program writers for the software that deals with processing the data from the DNA and
they were able to kind of work it enough that we were able to get a full profile
you upload your data and you just in the military DNA DNA exterx you know if they share more
DNA they more closely related they share less DNA they're more distantly related but they're all
related to Mr X amazingly the bloodline detectives have done it they patched together a DNA
sample now Colleen Fitzpatrick Begins the tedious work of looking for DNA matches while co-worker Gabriella Vargas
works with police to build the suspect's family tree I was on the phone with Gabby from like
Thursday to a Sunday and you know if she needed somebody's last name I would look
it up if she needed a birth certificate I'd call the police department and get that and you know just trying to piece
together because there's so much that it entails you know with divorces and adoptions and deaths and other siblings
or relatives that are you know Black Sheep it's just it's kind of a detailed process
Colleen Fitzpatrick is ready to ID a suspect for police in April of 2021 Gabby was able to
determine that the DNA belonged to one of three brothers the biggest thing we first check on is
just to kind of see background and history on on these three names and two of them we pretty much could eliminate
relatively quick because they did not appear to be in the area in 1987 with one of the names being left had been in
the general Michigan Indiana area the entire time [Music] intelligence and background information
was being conducted by the detectives at that point so yes we did a deep dive into it we did
a criminal history search we got multiple police reports and found that this subject had a extensive criminal
history and it happened to be that a lot of this criminal history was in some form of
sexual deviancy in nature we quickly isolated Patrick Gillum as an individual of those
three brothers that was the most likely suspect thanks to the incredible work of Colleen
Fitzpatrick and her whole team police now have a name Patrick Gillum after 34 years they've got to make an
arrest before it's too late that's next on bloodline Detectives foreign [Music] Michigan 2021 the bloodline detectives
have a suspect in the brutal sex assault and 1987 murder of 30 year old wife Roxanne wood his name Patrick Gillum but
now police must track him down and make that arrest went crazy on digging information on him
we found he had a prison history in Texas he was arrested in Arizona he had a prison history in Indiana it was just
a gamut of criminal history and it just so happens in 1979 a home invasion rape occurred in Gary Indiana
that case was an individual located down in Indiana and she was she was in her home with with her young children as
well Patrick Gillum broke into that home sexually assaulted her didn't kill her took some items from the home was pulled
over by a police department in Indiana ultimately he was interviewed and he confessed to being in that house
and said he blacked out and all he remembered was pulling his pants up against to 14 years in the Indiana
Correctional and was released after seven years and paroled he was on supervised parole
to South Bend Indiana in September of 86. he had been paroled for about six months
before he broke into Roxanne's home and killed her have the information they need to
touch Gillum down we knew because we had genealogy DNA that we were going to need to get
another sample of DNA to match his profile through our lab through CODIS as part of that we came up with a
strategy or plan to utilize one of our undercover units our fugitive team to surveil him
we knew he was a smoker and we were hopeful that when he moved or went mobile from his
house slash apartment he would discard a cigarette butt or go into a restaurant leave his DNA behind
on a class or on a cigarette butt the first time they went out they sat on the house like four days and no movement
but when Patrick left he was smoking in his windows down they see Patrick flip a cigarette out
his window one of the Troopers pulled his car over jumped out grabbed it put it in an
envelope brought it straight up to me I took it straight to the lab what they're trying to do is develop a
code of file from that to match the DNA because that's the legal form of identification now once they have that
they can go and arrest him you know you just can't arrest somebody you've got to
have that proof that it matches the crime scene and in this case they went to pick up a
cigarette butt and at first it didn't match the crime scene DNA [Music] I thought to myself that's impossible
and I even told him I said there's no way this guy was convicted of an identical crime went
to prison this is the guy I don't care this is the guy and he's like sorry yep don't match I'm a scientist I deal with
science and I was like man that's that's not good I don't believe that Gillum is not the
guy gillum's the guy a week later or so we set up another sting where our surveillance team went out there and
this time I think they got three cigarettes said well he did lose line of sight eye
contact with the cigarette butt just for a moment so we said well can you go back
and pick up the you know another cigarette this time you know make sure and he did and it was a match so the
first time he had the wrong cigarette but thank goodness old school police work meets the latest
in forensic science that's how the bloodline detectives I did the killer of Roxanne wood after 30 years
we went to him when we found this DNA out and one of the things that that we were asked by the prosecute attorney is
we need to get an interview into him because they could have some other explanation how his DNA came to be
I personally call left him messages and one point knocked on his door to try to attempted to raise him and there was
never any answer either way we didn't want him to know we were coming so we developed a strategy to meet him at his
home and basically set up surveillance on him wait for him to leave the residence and then approach him and
explain to him we need to talk to him about an old case that we believe he had some information on
so essentially that same undercover team they had been watching Mr gillum's house
they they let us know that yes Mr Gillum just left we knew from previous surveillance that usually when Mr Gillum
left it was not for very long usually it was a short trip and he he came back to
the house so when he came back home detective Moore and I were sitting in his driveway waiting for him
I see the door open on this truck and I jump out of the car kind of Dash up there and say hey uh do you mind talking
to me for a minute I'm a Michigan State Trooper he automatically you know started getting nervous and tried to
kind of make his way towards his door and I got his attention got him to come back and talk to him I said hey we're
you know my partner I said we're working on this case and we just need to touch base with you your name came up and he
was like okay I said you just drive yourself over South MPD we'll meet you over there before we left he said is
this about the Australian girl and I said well we'll talk about when you get over there and my partner I
looked at each other when we got in the car and we're like what the heck just happened who was this Australian girl
he comes into the lobby I greet him out there I asked him if it's okay if I checked his pockets
and he's got five pocket knives on him he looked old not not in great shape kind of shuffled as he walked didn't
look like he was very mobile we asked about this Australian girl and he said you know there was a lake up
there in Michigan that I was at with my buddy's cabin and there was a girl that got raped but I had nothing to do with
it so we just kind of put that in the back of our mind and and kind of went to the
direction of why we needed to talk to him he was definitely nervous I mean but that is a lot of times to be expected
with anybody their first contact with the police you know he was shaking he wanted to work with us but on the
other hand it was obvious that he wasn't going to let a lot of information out no matter what what it
was he said in 87 he was in South Bend he was working as a welder we ascertained
whether or not he was allowed to come into Michigan at all being on parole asked him if he knew any Roxanne's he
said I only know two one of them's moved out of state and the other one's a stripper but we knew that neither one of
those applied to to Roxanne wood we'd asked him questions about if he'd ever had any girlfriends in Michigan to which
he told us no we'd asked him about his general knowledge of Niles Township and Rhodes and
and he didn't know any of that either and he started getting you know a little a little nervous and
my partner said to him We're investigating an assault they showed him a picture of Roxanne Woods at the time A
Portrait of her and asked him if he'd ever met this woman or seen this woman that girl looks familiar
that's his newer pictures and here's an older picture it kind of looks the same but just a little bit of a
little bit of difference I've never seen her never met her don't know who she is
when he put the picture out in front of Patrick he started shaking and he said I
I need a lawyer I need a lawyer I gotta talk to my lawyer I gotta talk to my lawyer man
okay his reaction to that was an admission of that this guy did something and he knows
exactly what he did if we would have had a full confession at that point we would have arrested him
very likely but that's we didn't have that we let him walk out the front door which was our plan we knew we were going
to do that if the interview went in in that direction we had a meeting then with the
prosecutor's office we had an agreement from them that they were going to charge
and that he would be arrested he was charged with with open murder didn't want to use a SWAT team we didn't
want this to turn into a an overly violent situation when we didn't have to to do that so the plan was devised that
we would use a wrecker and tow his vehicle because we had a search warrant for the vehicle as well and when that
wrecker pulled up Mr Gillum came out asked what was going on and at that point he was taken into custody
after 34 years have the bloodline detectives finally identified and captured the violent monster who raped
and killed Roxanne wood that's next [Music] oh [Music] 2021 after 34 years police from Niles
Michigan finally make an arrest in the Savage sex assault of a young wife 34 years before now they had the suspect
under questioning we have a team that was searching and processing the scene his house as well
as his vehicle while that was happening he came into the police department and that is when we conducted the second
interview we told him this is why you're being or why you're under arrest because of
Roxanne Woods murder I started asking him I guess essentially to say what have you got to say about this you gave him
several opportunities to to explain himself told him that his DNA was found at the scene how do you explain your DNA
being there as we proceeded with the interview he would make comments of you have my DNA you have the photos
I must have done it he would never go into detail about the incident and he would use his drug abuse
as a as a pawn as why he couldn't remember things but at no point in time did he ever say he did not do it
police Grill Patrick Gillum still he will not admit to the crime even when he's told about DNA evidence
incriminating him but then detective John Moore tells Patrick Gillum what lies ahead for him
I said I don't care what you say I want this to go to trial I want this to go to trial I want people to see what
you did and I want you to give an explanation at the end of why you did it because our judge will will require that
think that stuck in the back of his mind and might have pushed him to request a plea in the end because it wasn't a
situation where our prosecutor went out and said hey we'll give you this plea the defense came to the prosecutor and
said this is what we want to do and we're willing to plea he pleaded to 23 years
for a secondary murder charge I was kind of dumbfounded because you know we were prepping for a big long
heavy duty trial Patrick Gillum takes a plea deal the very first person police want to contact
is that person their own colleagues thought may have committed the crime Roxanne Woods then husband Terry Wood
after we made the arrest I called him he showed up to State Police post in Niles
with his brother Robert and I sat talked with him and obviously he was very emotional being told that we
have the individual that killed Roxanne finally after 35 years it was a great feeling knowing that
finally we were able to give him hopefully some peace of mind and the community that it always questioned on
whether or not he was the one that killed his wife after over 35 years cops put Roxanne's
killer where he belongs behind bars now the team reflects on how important the use of genetic genealogy is to solving
this case on a scale of 0 to 100 100 being the most important it was a hundred because genealogy
and that advance in science is is what got us to where we are here today they took something from nothing and
they it turned into a person I mean that's really it's just the most amazing journey I I couldn't make this up
I want to say the genealogists that did the work on this was Gabby Vargas she did an absolute brilliant job and after
35 years she saw this in four days I mean the woman is brilliant Patrick Gillum had almost 35 years of
freedom that he shouldn't have had and Terry Wood the woods family her siblings had to go through 35 years of not
knowing so yes yes there's Justice I sure wish it would have happened sooner though
for Monsters like that if they left their DNA at the crime scene we're gonna find you it's just a matter of time
The Savage Sex Attack rape and murder of Roxanne wood is solved thanks to the incredible science of genetic genealogy
the more people whose DNA becomes available the more crimes can be solved and always remember your DNA is
everywhere on that glassy touch on the sheets you sleep on and in the case of Patrick Gillum on the cigarette butt he
flicked away a cigarette butt that provided bloodline detectives the match they desperately needed to find a killer
and bring resolution to a 34 year old Cold Case murder I'm Nancy Grace thank you for joining us
here on bloodline detectives [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music]

Niles, Michigan, 1987. Terry Wood arrives home to find his wife, Roxanne, dead on the kitchen floor and stunned by the horrific crime scene. Detectives work to identify the culprit but decades pass to no avail. Only the revolutionary method of genetic genealogy can provide answers 35 years later.

Now in its third season, Bloodline Detectives is the leading true crime series that explores how police departments harness genetic genealogy to solve crimes that were once considered "unsolvable," bringing long-awaited answers to victims' families.

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

Brief Summary

Roxanne Wood's 1987 murder is solved using genetic genealogy, identifying Patrick Gillum as the killer after 34 years.

Key points

Roxanne Wood's Murder. In 1987, Roxanne Wood was found dead in her home, leading to a cold case.
The Role of Genetic Genealogy. Detectives turn to genetic genealogy as a last hope to solve the case.
Identifying the Suspect. After years of investigation, police identify Patrick Gillum as the prime suspect.
The Arrest of Patrick Gillum. After 34 years, police finally arrest the man responsible for Roxanne Wood's murder.
DNA Evidence Leads to Confession. Despite initial denials, Gillum's DNA ties him to the crime scene, leading to a plea deal.
Genetic Genealogy Solves Cold Case. Advancements in genetic genealogy lead to the resolution of a 34-year-old murder case.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

A young wife brutally sex attacked then murdered.

Describing the impact of Roxanne's murder on the community.

8:15WatchMay 8, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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