Waiting for Answers (Kathy Halle, Pamela Maurer, Deborah Colliander, Charles Huber)
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The Greater New England area can evoke images of luxurious getaways. But what really lies beyond this coast? Both archives of dark history and more modern mysteries, all of which I have set out to uncover. I'm Kylie Lowe, investigative journalist and host of Dark Down East.

Each week, I dig deeper into the cases from the place I call home and into the stories of the people at the hearts of them. Listen to Dark Down East now, wherever you get your podcasts.

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To lose somebody in such a violent way and then just to live year after year not knowing what happened to her or who did it is a nightmare that no one wishes upon anybody. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasika Nikolazi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder.

Some crimes raise more questions than answers, leaving families, friends, and entire communities trapped in the limbo of uncertainty. The story of Kathy Holly was one shrouded in heartbreak and mystery. In 1979, at just 19 years old, she vanished without a trace. What followed was a void filled only by whispers of what could have happened. The clues were there, pieces of a puzzle scattered across the years.

But the truth doesn't stay hidden. It finds a way to surface, even when buried deep. Investigators work to uncover that truth, and in a case like this, to hopefully transform lingering questions into definitive answers. It's a role that requires determination and persistence, qualities that Detective Ryan Peete embodies.

I've always been someone who just wants to find answers. You know, I like researching things. I like digging into things. If somebody loses something, I want to be the guy to help them find it. I've just always had that in me. I don't know what it is, but I just love the idea of being the guy that puts the pieces together. Ryan spent more than a decade at the North Aurora Police Department in North Aurora, Illinois. For the past three years, he's worked in their investigation division.

And Ryan actually has some crossover with our very own Scott Weinberger, but not in the way you might be thinking. ♪

I've played drums my entire life, like from the sixth grade on. Still playing, I'm playing in church this coming weekend. I've always been a big music guy, so I wanted to take a shot at working in the music industry. I went to college at a university in Florida for music production and engineering, and I came out and was working in Chicago at some recording studios as an assistant engineer, engineer and producer on a couple of albums.

Yeah, he's a drummer, which is one of my passions. You know, Anastasia, you've actually come to see me play, which I really appreciated when you came out. For all of you who think that may be a crazy idea, I'll post a picture of myself from the old days.

Please don't mind the crazy hair and the mustache. And then something more recent. But Ryan really understood the difference between playing drums professionally and also working for the police department. But the music industry isn't always easy on family life. As Ryan's priorities shifted, he knew it was time for a change. He was hired by the North Aurora Police Department right before his 35th birthday.

Years later, when he began working in investigations, there was one case he was already familiar with. That's because it had been an open case unsolved for over 40 years. Coming into this case, I really didn't know what to expect. It is just one of those cases just kind of hung over the department for the last 45 years.

That was the case of Kathy Holly, a young woman who had gone missing in March of 1979. What happened to Kathy wasn't just another file in the drawer or on a shelf. It was the story that every officer knew, a reminder of justice still delayed but not forgotten. So every sergeant that had worked back here before he promoted out or moved on to a different division had worked on this case.

The file looked its age. It had about 500 pages of handwritten and typed notes that barely survived the test of time. As Ryan sifted through the fading pages, he began to piece together the details of Kathy's life. She was a young woman from a close-knit family and one of four siblings. She shared an apartment and a car with one of her sisters.

Kathy had recently graduated high school and worked at a record shop in the trendy Northgate Shopping Plaza of North Aurora. Back then, that was the place to be. That was the hangout for all the kids. And on the weekends, they'd have their car shows. That was the hangout was everybody go to Northgate Shopping Plaza.

Her sister worked at a grocery store at the center. The pair often relied on each other for rides back and forth between work and their apartment about a mile apart. On the night of March 29th, 1979, it was Kathy's turn to pick her sister up from work. She said goodbye to her roommate about 9 p.m. and headed out the door on her way to her car. ♪

An hour passed, and when Kathy still hadn't shown up, her sister reached out to their parents, who hadn't heard from her either. The no-show was highly out of character for Kathy. From what I can tell, she was a responsible person. They said, this isn't like Kathy not to come pick up her sister. So they were concerned, like, no, something's not right. She would have been here. The family called around to Kathy's friends and boyfriend to see if anyone knew where she was, but nobody did. Next, they tried to piece together her evening.

They all got together and kind of started backtracking where Kathy would have gone. They weren't able to find her. Early the next morning, the family reported Kathy missing. At that time, these types of things didn't happen in North Aurora. So when they initially called the police, they said, you know, she's 19 years old. She may just be out doing whatever 19-year-olds do and being irresponsible. So they didn't take it real serious at the time as far as a missing person went.

The family was told to wait 24 hours, and if Kathy still hadn't returned, they should file a missing persons report. But that didn't stop them from searching for her on their own. And that's when they discovered the first troubling clue. It was Kathy's car, which was still parked on the opposite side of her apartment complex. The windows were all left down. There was a small pool of blood in the back seat on the floorboard behind the passenger seat, I believe, in her car.

Several things did seem clear: that Kathy had not made it out of the complex safely, and the blood pointed instead to either a medical emergency or something much worse. Around the same time, another member of the family's search party was looking around the apartment complex. The buildings were two-story structures with low, flat roofs. Family got up on the roof of the complex, and that's where they discovered Kathy's purse was laying up on top of the roof of the apartment complex.

It contained Kathy's identification and other belongings. The purse appeared fully intact, not rifled through or strewn about. It seemed almost like someone had tossed it from the ground below.

You know, honestly, I think it's pretty clear here that the family no longer thinks that Kathy is simply a missing person. From the start, they were the best ones to judge whether leaving without calling her loved ones was something she would not normally do. And I think this pocketbook on the roof tells a completely disturbing story. And while there still were many unknowns, the clues did paint a worrisome picture.

Kathy's family quickly called the police and shared what they had found. When investigators arrived, they began to focus their efforts on Kathy's car. So the car had been ransacked. It looked like somebody had gone through everything. Various items were observed and collected, including some quite personal in nature. There was a discarded tampon in the backseat of the car. So that was a point of question, too. So that was collected.

Between that, the state of the car, and the blood, it appeared crystal clear that this was not a simple missing persons investigation. Clear clues here that this could be an abduction or even worse. They did take photos and collect blood. At that time, blood typing was the game, you know, for evidence then. So they wanted to get a sample of the blood so that they could compare it to what Kathy's blood type and see if they could match anything up to see whose blood it actually was.

Kathy Holly was officially entered into the police system as a missing person. While the blood was being processed, the investigation into her disappearance kicked into high gear. As part of that, police set up a perimeter around the apartment complex and began interviewing everyone they could in the hopes of finding witnesses.

The police were canvassing, looking in the areas. They were checking with other friends and how taxes she had. The family was very involved as far as being out looking for her and trying to put the pieces together themselves. As part of their initial assessments, investigators also took a close look at Kathy's boyfriend, who they confirmed had been with her earlier on the night she disappeared. He had said she returned home before she left to get her car.

He also was cooperative with investigators, and he had a solid alibi. However, there was some information gathered by police as part of their neighborhood canvas that piqued their interest. One of the residents of that apartment complex said he had witnessed something strange around 9 p.m. the same night Kathy went missing.

As he was pulling into the parking lot, he gets out of his car and he sees this car driving at him and he looks and he's like, this guy's driving kind of reckless through the parking lot. As that car got closer, the resident said that he could see a man behind the wheel and there was also a passenger in the vehicle.

When he was interviewed, he initially said that he saw a car that matches Kathy's description and there was a male driver and a female in the passenger seat that looked directly at him with a look of despair on her face. In hindsight, the description painted a grim picture. But when police went back to the neighbor to follow up what he had said, his story changed.

This different version left investigators confused until it was late to learn why his story may have changed. The day after speaking with police, the man had gone out to his car and both of his headlights had been smashed in.

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they temporarily turned their focus back to Kathy's boyfriend. And here's why. Not long after her disappearance, he had attempted to take his own life, a tragic event that fueled speculation in the community.

Rumors swirled that he was driven by a guilty conscience. Despite the gossip, police again ruled him out as a suspect. For weeks, they continued to comb the area around Kathy's apartment, looking for anything that might aid them in finding Kathy and figure out what happened. Back in the 1970s, North Aurora and its surrounding area looked much different than the suburban sprawl that exists today.

North of us is a river town, so the Fox River runs right through the middle of our town. So along the river, there's a lot of wooded areas. There's a lot of rural areas in the surrounding areas to the town itself. Kathy's family was still also actively searching the area. Her father, who worked for the Federal Aviation Administration, brought a unique resource to the search, airplanes. They had airplanes in the air that were doing searches and stuff for her.

and checking the rivers and checking around the area and seeing if they could find anywhere she may have gone. The intense searches went on for weeks. On April 24th, nearly four weeks after her disappearance, a local fisherman was at the Fox River just about a mile from Kathy's apartment. He saw something floating about 15 yards off the east bank of the river. It turned out to be the body of a young woman.

The woman was fully clothed, wearing a coat and shoes. Kathy's disappearance was still fresh in people's minds, so police called her father down to the morgue to see if the woman was Kathy.

He wasn't able to because of the state of decomposition at that point. And again, mostly because of the swelling and bruising. But the clothing, they said, matched hers. And so basically the clothing and then the blood typing, when it came back, they were able to identify her through her blood and, I believe, dental work. An autopsy soon revealed numerous clues about how she died. And we do want to warn you that the description is unsettling and may be triggering for some. Kathy's face and neck showed signs of a violent struggle.

There was some bruising to her face that looked like she had been punched. The initial autopsy, they talk about a small puncture wound in the left side of her neck and in the left side of her sweater that somebody had pushed an ice pick type weapon up to her neck type of thing. There was a small mark there on her neck. There was also lacerations on her mouth where it looked like she had bitten through her own lip, possibly from being struck.

When the examination was complete, the medical examiner ruled on Kathy's cause of death. Autopsy said cause of death was strangulation, asphyxiation, so she was strangled to death.

Her death was officially classified as a homicide. At this point in the investigation, police had several pieces of potential evidence. Kathy's car, the blood found nearby, her purse, the witness observations who had since recanted, and now the autopsy results.

The clues helped build a theory of what may have happened to Kathy and where it may have occurred. We think she was found fairly close to where she was ultimately killed. Although pieces of potential evidence were being gathered, the investigation faced a major roadblock. None of it pointed police to a suspect.

It went cold rather quick. We really didn't have any idea of who would have done this. There was a lot of speculation as far as boyfriend was a possibility, the other associates were possibilities, co-workers were possibilities, and all those people were fairly quickly ruled out. And so the case sat. Weeks became months, which became years, and eventually decades. It was really quiet for a long time. There wasn't a lot of new information available.

While Kathy's case had stalled, as the years went by, advancements in forensic science were exploding. In the 1970s, investigators had relied on something called blood typing, a method that could narrow down a suspect pool, but it wasn't specific enough to identify an individual.

Then in 1984, a scientific breakthrough changed everything. A British geneticist developed a technique called DNA fingerprinting. The method allowed scientists to isolate and identify variable elements within a DNA sequence. This made it possible to link DNA evidence to a specific person with unprecedented accuracy. And if we go a little deeper for a moment, because we always talk about DNA,

DNA fingerprinting is like finding a unique barcode for every person using their DNA. Imagine your body has a blueprint. This is your DNA, and it's made up of a unique pattern that's different from almost everyone else except perhaps identical twins. DNA fingerprinting is like identifying one needle in a haystack, while DNA databases is like building the haystack and searching through it later.

And by the early 2000s, DNA fingerprinting was widely used in forensic investigations. A North Aurora detective thought it was time to try the technology on Kathy's evidence, which had been carefully preserved for decades. The testing showed promising results.

So some of the stuff we had tested at that time showed that there was a mixture of DNA present in some of the swabbings, but the technology wasn't there to separate that stuff and figure out who was who with it. The conclusions did reveal DNA belonging to another person in addition to Kathy. But they couldn't get more specific than that. So investigators next decided to test that DNA against several previous old suspects in the case.

In the 2000s, they went back and got DNA samples from the boyfriend. They got DNA samples from her boss. And they retest the stuff compared to some of the evidence that they have. None of the known samples they collected matched any of the DNA collected as part of the investigation. So it was back to the drawing board, but not for a lack of trying. Something would spark up and then they would test it and they'd get a negative result. And then it would just kind of go cold again as fast as it heated back up.

And over the years, North Aurora wasn't the only police department taking advantage of the advances in DNA technology. The town of Lyle, Illinois, is just 10 miles east of North Aurora. Also, they had a cold case from the 70s that they hoped DNA testing could solve. And it had some striking similarities to Kathy's.

In January of 1976, a 16-year-old girl named Pam Maurer was at a friend's house on a snowy night. She was hanging out with some friends. She had walked over to a laundromat that was about a block away to buy some soda. And she was never heard from again.

The following morning, someone on their way to work found the body of a female off of the side of the road lying near a guardrail. Initially, the scene appeared to be a hit and run, but that conclusion quickly changed.

It looked like somebody had staged it to look like she had been hit by a car. She was laying on the outside of a bridge curve in the snowbank. So she was laying in the snow alongside the road. When police arrived, they noticed something that got their attention: a rubber hose lying next to the body. They took it in as potential evidence, and it was determined later to be related. An autopsy revealed the remains were indeed Pam Maurer, and this was no hit and run.

Pam had been strangled to death using that rubber hose, and there were additional disturbing details.

The autopsy also concluded that there had been sexual activity sometime shortly before her death. But there were no signs of physical trauma, which at the time often steered investigations away from the potential of sexual assault. Of course, now we know that sexual assault can occur with and without obvious signs of physical injury. Some victims may struggle and some may react in the opposite manner.

sometimes by freezing or even becoming passive out of absolute terrifying fear or shock.

But back then, the theory was that Pam had left her friend's house on foot heading to get a soft drink. And while walking, investigators say she came face to face with a killer. Hours later, they would find her body. And while initially they recovered some biological evidence from her clothing, it was unclear if she had consensual sex or if it was part of the assault after she left her friend's house.

her boyfriend and others were all ruled out as possible suspects by police. And so what happened to Pam Maurer, the case just sat like Kathy's for decades. So that was a whole case of theirs that had been sitting on their desk for the same as ours. You know, it's just one of those that would work and they didn't have any evidence to tie anybody to it.

But then, just about five years ago from now, investigators decided to take another look at Pam Maurer's case. The Lyle Police Department reopened one of their cold closings in 2019. The evidence in Pam's case had fortunately been, and in some ways miraculously been, preserved for decades, including a pair of jeans that had a yellowish stain on the pocket. Investigators thought that it looked consistent with semen.

Using the new advancements in DNA technology, they were able to extract a profile from the stain. And from that profile, a snapshot image was created of what Pam's attacker may have looked like, including his facial characteristics and eye color. The process of generating an image from DNA evidence is called DNA phenotyping, and it would come into play in a big way in this case.

The DNA was put into a federal database, but they didn't get any matches. So investigators decided to try a novel approach, genetic genealogy, which is becoming more popular. So Lyle Police decided to look there. Since then, I believe that Ancestry.com and 23andMe and these are no longer required to give information over to the police without search warrants and stuff. But at this time, it was like, hey, can you guys find this family in your database? And they were able to trace this back.

to a family that lived in the area during the 1970s. The name of that family was Lindahl. Using the time and location of Pam's murder, police narrowed down the Lindahl's family's possibilities to two brothers who lived in the area in the 1970s. One of those brothers was Bruce Lindahl. He had lived and worked in the Fox Valley area for most of his life.

He was really connected to the skydiving community. He worked as a meter reader for the gas company for a while, which put him in this area. There was a factory here in town that we were able to track back to find employment records that he worked in town here in North Aurora. So he kind of bounced around from job to job.

But in his late 20s, Bruce Lindahl became known to authorities. He had died, but it wasn't straightforward. The story caught the eye of investigators in Pam's case. Bruce's death, they realized, may not be the end of his story. As they dug into it a little bit further, they found out that Bruce Lindahl had actually died committing another murder in Naperville in 1981. So at that point, they're like, this may be our guy.

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Visit IXL.com slash anatomy to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. In 1981, Bruce Lindahl was bowling in Naperville, which is a half hour east of Aurora. There, he crossed paths with a high school senior named Charles Huber. Charles Huber then somehow goes back to Bruce's apartment.

And sometime throughout the night when they're hanging out there, Bruce attacks him and stabs him. I mean, just multiple times. At one point he had him from what is described, I guess, like almost like in a chokehold and was stabbing him over the top. And he actually stabs through Charles Huber into his own leg. Charles Huber was stabbed over 20 times.

In a twist of fate, Bruce Lindahl severed his own femoral artery during the attack and he bled to death at the scene, dying while committing the murder.

And Scott, you know, you and I have seen and talked about multiple times that it really is not that uncommon for someone to be injured when they are specifically stabbing someone because they are in this frenzy. But certainly to bleed to death themselves, that is not the most common, to say the least.

Yeah, we see many cases, Anastasia, as you know, where the offender is cut because clearly stabbing someone involves a lot of blood and the knife gets slippery and it comes out of their hand or they end up injuring themselves in this frenzy of stabbing. But to hear him actually sever his own femoral artery, I don't know if I've ever heard that before, but it's certainly common, as you said, for them to at least be injured.

And just the discovery that Bruce Lindell had committed a murder raised a big red flag for police. And the rest of his file only added to that suspicion, including charges from a horrible case that occurred a year before his death. A woman had ridden her bike to the Northgate Shopping Center. If that location sounds familiar to you, it's because it's the same shopping center where Kathy Hawley had worked.

After the young woman got into the car, Lindahl also got in and held a sharp object to her neck.

He drove her to his home in Aurora and proceeded to sexually assault her. For whatever reason, if it was drugs or alcohol or what was involved after the sexual assault, Bruce kind of passes out and falls asleep. She kind of slinks out and goes running down the street naked to one of the neighbors house. Please help me. Please help me. Like knocking on everybody's door.

When a neighbor finally answered, the young woman frantically explained what had happened. She described her attacker as having haunting, bright blue eyes. The homeowner immediately recognized the person she was describing, based on the eyes, as his neighbor who lived just a few doors away, Bruce Lindahl. And Lindahl then was quickly arrested and held on the assault, but was soon able to make bail.

Just a few weeks before the trial was supposed to begin, something shocking happened. That young woman, whose name was Deborah Colliander, disappeared and was never heard from again. At the trial, there was no main witness to testify against Lindahl. Without a complaining witness, all charges are dropped and Bruce is let go and is free to be out on the street again. Two years passed without anyone knowing what had happened to Deb Colliander.

Then in 1982, her body was found in a farm field about 15 miles south of North Aurora. Her death was ruled a homicide. Again, there's never been any proof that tied him to that because of the time frame. From the time she disappeared to the time she was found, it was nothing but skeletal remains. So there was no DNA or anything to tie Bruce to that murder.

But the timing definitely led to suspicions and to the discovery of something else. During the investigation into Charles Huber's murder, police had uncovered a box of photographs in Lindahl's home. It turned out he happened to be a hobby photographer, but his images were disturbing in the worst of ways.

There was also a photograph of Lindell himself. It turned out he looked strikingly similar to the photograph generated by the DNA phenotyping in Pat Maurer's case.

Based on what they discovered, the Lyle Police Department secured a warrant to exhume Bruce Lindahl's body for a DNA sample.

So Lyle PD, they do a direct comparison from Bruce's body to get DNA and they find a direct match to their murder weapon in the Pam Maurer case. In January of 2020, 48 years later, the Lyle Police Department announced they had identified Pam Maurer's killer. It was Bruce Lindell. Their discovery triggered what's called a critical reach.

Ryan and his fellow investigators in North Aurora were paying close attention.

When we received that, our detectives at the time kind of were like, hey, wait a minute, let's look at Kathy again. So we left with the detectives from Lyle and started looking back into our case. There were more than a few similarities between the homicides of the two young women. Both Pam and Kathy were killed in a similar manner, within a 20-mile radius from each other and within a few years from one another.

Also, the year that Kathy was killed, Bruce had been living in Aurora, and his photography hobby would often take him to a location Kathy knew well, the Northgate Shopping Plaza. The main place where he would go to get photos developed in the 1970s was at the Northgate Shopping Plaza.

So he was at Northgate on a regular basis, which is where Kathy was employed at the time of her homicide. So that was one of the things that kind of started putting pieces together for us on our end. The investigation team at North Aurora decided to send Kathy's evidence to the lab, the same lab that had found Lindahl's DNA on Pam's evidence. Perhaps they would find the same DNA on Kathy's clothing. The main method used for that DNA collection at the lab was swabbing.

They're doing the old, I say old fashioned now, it's still the main way of doing DNA collection, but they take the swab and roll it across the article of evidence and then they test that DNA that's collected on the swab and then compare it to whatever DNA they can find on there. The lab found results that were consistent with previous testing. They found male DNA, but they were not able to get a clear profile.

They, again, test Kathy's evidence. They compare it directly to Bruce Lindahl's DNA that they have at that time. But unfortunately, our samples at that point are too degraded to get a workable profile. The solving of Pam Maurer's homicide had given renewed hope to Kathy's investigators. So the inconclusive testing was a real letdown.

So at that point, the case, you know, for lack of a better term, it doesn't go cold, but it's kind of we're back right where we started of, well, we at least know there's a male there. But, you know, was it the boyfriend or was it the guy who killed her? You know, we don't have any idea who it could be at that point. So it's just kind of we're back at square one. On top of that, in 2022, a documentary film series came out featuring Lindahl's story, his troubling box of photos and the murder of Pam Maurer.

It also mentioned Kathy's case, despite the fact that there was no conclusive evidence or court determinations, but it tied Lindahl to Kathy Halle's murder. The film put North Aurora investigators in an awkward position, especially with Kathy's family. The family sees the documentary and they're like, hey, what the heck? Why are they saying that Bruce Lindahl killed our daughter or sister? And we're like...

We have zero evidence to prove that. That airing of the documentary put pressure on police to link Lindahl to Kathy's murder or rule him out completely. While this was unfolding, Ryan attended a continuing education course, a requirement for his work as lead homicide investigator. During that course, Ryan had a lightbulb moment.

One of the instructors there was Orland Park Deputy Chief Larry Rafferty, and his block of information that he presents in the class is all about Mvac technology, which is this new DNA technology that allows degraded and minuscule samples to kind of get the best possible profile based off of these filters that this Mvac uses.

And for context, the MVAC system is a high-tech wet-dry vacuum designed specifically for extracting DNA from porous material like clothes. It sprays a sterile solution and then vacuums it back up, collecting any DNA particles and fibers along the way. It can be more effective than the swabbing method, which is more regularly used for DNA extraction. So the smallest particle of

skin or whatever is being vacuumed up with that solution and collected in these filters. The filters are then tested and they were able to build better profiles off of degraded DNA because you're getting every last scrap of it pulled out of the evidence. Ryan told the instructor about Kathy's case. The instructor connected him with a DNA expert who told him about a private lab in Florida that did impact testing he had learned about.

This is one of the leading labs in the nation and the world, and this is their specialty, is working on these cold cases and using the NVEC to solve these types of cases. And that's how I got hooked up with DNA Labs.

But testing Kathy's evidence would be far from simple. For us to find a workable profile is going to be tough because of those situations. Kathy, from all we can tell, sat in running water in the Fox River for three weeks. You know, so at that point, we're like, any DNA or anything is going to be washed away. Or so we thought.

And with nowhere else to go with the now decades-old cold case, Ryan decided to move forward with testing at DNA Labs International. The stakes were incredibly high. Yeah, this is our Hail Mary. Who knows what is going to be down the road 10 years from now, but like this was for our time and space right now, this was our shot to try to close this case.

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Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash AOM. That's netsuite.com slash AOM. It was decided that despite the high chance of failure, testing the evidence in Kathy Holly's homicide case was important to try. The MBAC system, which would be used, might be the one thing that could overcome the degradation of evidence collected and preserved in this case.

But they faced more than one hitch. The first was the price tag. It was a private DNA lab and the cost of testing would be over $20,000, a higher price than many small police departments could afford. Then I'm presenting this to the chief and I'm like, hey, chief, here's the bill. And he's like, hold on.

The police department was committed to testing the evidence, but they needed a cost-effective way to do it. You know, that is one thing, Scott, that obviously if we think about it, people will get it. But I don't think that everyone necessarily thinks about it right away that, you know, you actually need the dollars to be able to spend to do some of this work. And that is something that specifically smaller departments come up against all the time.

Not many police agencies in the U.S. has a dedicated cold case unit. They're expensive to run, and you're taking detectives out of the rotation, which may be investigating crimes which occur daily, and then asking them to spend months, if not years, working on multiple unsolved crimes. And as you say, then there's the cost of the technology. I mean—

Advanced DNA testing is really, really expensive. So those are barriers that many agencies have to pass over. And unfortunately, you know, these cold cases where you wish you had 100 detectives working on these cold cases, but it's not feasible. So with Kathy's case,

The high price forced Ryan and the DNA expert to think strategically about which of the evidence to test. And we came up with a plan that was like, let's start with the underwear, the tampon string, and, you know, the main areas that we want to focus on. Let's test those first. And that got our price down to about, I believe, around $9,000. Ryan then reached out to nonprofit organizations, one of which was in fact established by the Audiochuck Network.

Season of Justice is a nonprofit organization that basically provides grants for laboratories to do DNA research on these cold cases.

Seasons of Justice provided a grant to the North Aurora Police Department to help pay for the testing, making the testing more affordable for the department, which helped get this important work underway. The next hurdle Ryan faced was related to CODIS, which stands for the Combined DNA Index System. It's an FBI tool that enables forensic labs to exchange and compare DNA profiles electronically. Wow.

While Kathy's evidence was being tested specifically for Lindahl's DNA, the department needed to plan for the scenario that it wasn't a match, in which case it would need to be entered into CODIS. The other portion of that is that if you don't have CODIS eligibility before you do the testing, as soon as chemical touches evidence, you're no longer eligible to ever in the CODIS.

It took extra work to make sure the testing would be CODIS eligible. Once that had been worked out, there was one last logistical hurdle: getting Kathy's evidence down to Deerfield Beach, Florida, where the specific lab was located. It may sound like a simple enough task, but in reality it was anything but. They could ship the evidence, but what if it got lost in transit? They could fly to Florida with the evidence, but that brought up other complications.

They were all risks that Ryan and his team weren't willing to take. So for them, it left only one solution.

So at that point, the plan was made that my partner and I were just going to drive the evidence down to Deerfield Beach, Florida, which we loaded all the stuff up on dry ice and started heading south. Ryan and his counterpart set off for the multi-day journey.

Carrying it into our hotel room where we stayed in the panhandle the first night and then carrying it back out to the car and, you know, making sure that we didn't break chain of custody and, you know, just making sure that everything was, just to make sure the integrity was there the entire way down. It was a stressful drive. They eventually made it to the lab and signed the evidence over. The lab estimated it would take between six to eight months to complete the testing. So they have everything in storage in their area. We're waiting on them to get us an answer on whether or not they're able to find anything.

Once they made it back home, Ryan and his partner waited anxiously for the results and at times talked through what getting the results might do for this case. We're sitting there and he's like, you know, you may get one of the coolest phone calls in the history of the North Florida Police Department when this stuff comes back. He goes, so good luck, man. And then they waited and waited. 14 months passed before any word came back from the lab.

Then in August of 2024, Ryan took a few days off and went to Montana on vacation with his family. They had just finished a long hike and reached the side of a mountain where he surprisingly found some cell service. Ryan heard his phone ringing and looked down. It was the DNA expert he had been working with. Even though he was up in the mountains on vacation, he picked up the phone. She had gotten the results back.

She said, this is absolutely hand of God. We have one of the best profiles we've ever gotten, and it is a direct link to Bruce Lindahl.

It was 9.4 trillion times more probable originating from Bruce Lindahl than any other human on Earth. It was the moment Ryan had been waiting for, hoping for the confirmation they needed to finally link Lindahl to Kathy's murder. It couldn't have come at a better time. I got the phone call and I could say, you know, in one of the most beautiful locations possible, too, standing on a mountain in Montana. So it was great.

The moment of confirmation was deeply memorable, not just for its significance to the case, but to the answers it would finally bring Kathy's family. The results were brought to the local prosecutor and Kathy's case was officially marked closed. Getting to the truth of what happened to Kathy meant a lot to many in the community. Here is North Aurora's police chief at a press conference announcing the development in the case.

This achievement is a testament to the relentless dedication and hard work of the members of the North Florida Police Department since 1979. Their commitment to seeking the truth and serving our community has never wavered, even as the years passed without answers. Each investigator involved in this case exemplified perseverance, going above and beyond to ensure Kathy was never forgotten.

For Ryan, solving Kathy's murder had always been about giving her family the answers they had been waiting for for so long. Kathy's parents had been growing older and their time to get those answers was running out. My prayer was always like, hey, I want to be able to give this family closure. The mom and dad are both still alive. Their health is failing. Like, I want to be able to give them an answer before something happens to them.

The resolution wouldn't undo the decades of pain or bring Kathy back. But for Ryan, it was about giving Kathy's family the truth they deserved.

They've dealt with this for 45 years not knowing. And again, nothing that we did brings Kathy back. Nothing we did will ever serve justice to Bruce Lindahl. But we were able to give family that closure. And that was what was important to me on this case is saying that, okay, this is what happened to Kathy that night. And, you know, so they can have that peace.

Ryan and another detective who had spent years on the case alerted Kathy's family that there had been a major development. Her parents and three siblings gathered together for a meeting. We sat down with them and our chaplain and our social workers and we had our therapy dog in there and just kind of everybody's crying and talking about it. It was just a really emotional kind of giving them those answers. So we kind of all sat down as a team, as a department and told them together.

The DNA testing offered long-awaited answers to questions that had haunted Kathy's family and community for decades. They were able to piece together a likely theory of what had happened that night so long ago. Lindahl's interest in Kathy had likely begun before that night. They believe he had seen her on one of his many visits to the shopping center and had discovered where she lived.

Lindahl had likely staked out her apartment complex and waited for the right time to attack. And then he drove her to this rural area. So at the time, it was just a gravel road that went down to like a little just a place you could park and fish. There were some fishing cottages down there, but it was a real rural, remote area. So we think is that he drove her down to that area and then that's where he ultimately killed her and threw her body in the river.

A state attorney explained to Kathy's family that they don't prosecute people after their death. So if Bruce was alive, I would be confident that we would have charged him with the first degree murder of Kathy Holly. And we would have taken that to trial and been able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bruce was responsible for Kathy's death. And we would have put him in prison for the murder of Kathy Holly. Here is the state attorney speaking about the investigation's findings.

Had he not killed himself while in a murder, we would have authorized first-degree murder charges against Bruce Lindahl, and we would have proceeded to trial on that.

Because he has passed away, we're not going to posthumously do any charges, but to the family, I want you to know that this would have been a case we would have charged. We would have actively prosecuted it, and I'm confident that based on the work of the detectives at North Aurora and all the scientists involved with the DNA labs, we would have finally obtained justice for Kathy.

In a case where no courtroom justice could be served, Ryan hoped that the answers would at least bring Kathy's family a measure of peace. 45 years, it's a lifetime for a lot of people and hopefully it will give them some kind of peace and closure. And I don't know, it's tough. Following the closure of the case, Kathy's family delivered the following statement. While revisiting this case has been incredibly difficult for our family, we are deeply grateful to finally have closure after 45 long years.

Thanks to advancements in DNA technology and groundbreaking investigative tools, we are hopeful that other families won't have to endure the same pain and uncertainty that we faced for so many years. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the Northborough Police Department and all the agencies and organizations involved for their dedication, persistence, and for never giving up, even when the odds seemed impossible.

The new information also gave Kathy's then-boyfriend, who had been with her the night she disappeared, a sense of closure as well. We called him when we got his results to let him know, and he still was sobbing. And he's like, "I've lived with this for 45 years."

With Lindahl's DNA linked to yet another female's murder, the door was open for solving additional cases potentially linking them to him.

There's still several other circumstantial cases of missing girls that were found strangled in the river and neighboring towns. And, you know, they were abducted in two towns north of us in St. Charles to and then found in Glen Ellen or vice versa. So there's several other cases that may at some point be linked to Bruce Lindahl. But again, without definitive answers, I don't want to say that he's responsible for them.

For Ryan, closing Kathy's case was both a personal and professional milestone, a reflection of why he became an investigator in the first place.

And again, it's a bittersweet success to be able to be the one that types case closed on this case when so many of these seasoned investigators have worked on it. It's just a solemn pride, I guess, that I'm able to do that. It's not, I don't know, it's a, it's just really cool.

The moment encapsulated the core of Ryan's work, giving families the answers they've waited for. No matter how long it takes, decades after Kathy Holly's murder, Ryan was finally able to write the words: "On the file. Case closed." This case underscores two pivotal themes: the relentless pursuit of justice and the transformative power of modern forensic technology.

DNA technology has become the ultimate truth teller in criminal investigations, giving voice to the evidence that has been silent for decades and unlocking doors to justice that were once thought to be permanently closed.

The resolution of Kathy's case marks a profoundly emotional chapter for her family, a mix of long overdue answers and haunting loss. In the cruel passage of time, some family members went to their graves without even knowing the truth, carrying the weight of the unanswered questions that time refused to heal. Kathy's case stands as a powerful narrative. Time can pass unanswered.

but justice can still prevail and hope can endure. Over the years, Kathy Holly's family has chosen not to be involved in media accounts of her story. We are told that they listened to some episodes of AOM and then gave their approval for Ryan Peete to be involved in this episode. That means so much to me and Scott.

It's the very best validation that we are telling these stories with the victims and survivors in the forefront of our minds, and that our mindset is clear by the way these cases are conveyed.

Thank you to the Hawley family for allowing us to share Kathy's story and the work done on her behalf with this AOM community of listeners. As evidenced by their comments almost daily, their empathy and care is what you would hope for from people learning about the many victims of homicide week after week. Kathy Hawley, Pam Maurer, Deb Colliander, and Charles Huber, all victims of the same predator.

We remember you each today, along with your families and loved ones who still grieve. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Tracy Levy, researched by Kate Cooper, edited by Ali Sirwa, and Philjean Grande.

So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? There are some cases so infamous that we have all heard about them. But some of the coldest cases, the most mysterious, are the ones that you've never heard of before. I'm Ashley Flowers, and every Wednesday on my show, The Deck, I dive into the coldest cases.

coldest of cold cases. Many of these victims didn't get the press coverage they deserve during the initial investigations, but I'm sharing what our reporting team has found on these stories in hopes that someone listening may have the information needed to bring answers to light. And that listener could be you. Listen to The Deck now wherever you get your podcasts.