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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. 23-year-old Jennifer loved helping people. The young wife and mother had aspirations of becoming a nurse.
So when she landed a job serving meals at the hospital, she inched closer to her dream. Her two young children would one day call their mother a nurse. But in November 1999, life turned upside down. The same hospital that once held her dream became her family's worst nightmare. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 130, the story of Jennifer Watkins.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new exciting cases, conduct in-depth fact-based research, produce and edit this weekly show. As a thank you for supporting the show, you'll get early ad-free access to weekly episodes, shout-outs and episodes, priority on case suggestions, and access to weekly bonus episodes.
To support Forensic Tales, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales or simply click the link in the show notes. You can also support the show by leaving a positive rating with a review. Now, let's get to this week's case. On Monday, November 8th, 1999, two elevator maintenance workers arrived at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Colorado Springs is a densely populated community that sits on the eastern foot of the Rocky Mountains. It's a place known for the Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak, and is the location of the official U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center. But on that cold November morning, Colorado Springs became known for something far more sinister.
The two elevator maintenance workers arrived at Memorial Hospital to service the hospital's elevators. The entire hospital had been under renovation for months. Improvements to the elevators were just one small aspect of the project. Shortly after arriving at the hospital, the workers went to the eighth floor to begin work. Since the hospital was under renovation, only a few people had access to the hospital's eighth floor.
Only members of the hospital's maintenance team and other workers were granted access. The two workers noticed a strong, foul smell as soon as they got to the eighth floor. It smelled like something was dead. Maybe an animal, the workers thought. They knew the area was blocked off to the public, so perhaps some animal crawled up there through the elevators and got stuck.
They followed the scent to a stairway slightly to the side of the elevators. As they inched closer, the smell's intensity increased. The smell was dreadful. But it wasn't an animal. No, it was a human body. The two workers stumbled upon what looked like a human body wrapped in a plastic tarp bound with duct tape underneath the stairwell.
Completely unsure, the two men quickly ran down to the hospital's maintenance office. They told the staff that they found what looked like a human body underneath the stairwell on the eighth floor. The maintenance staff immediately picked up the phone and called the Colorado Springs Police Department. Within minutes, homicide detectives from the department arrived on the scene and got to work trying to find out what happened and to who.
When they got to the eighth floor, detectives entered the stairwell where the elevator's workers said they found the body. As they stated, the police found what appeared to be a tightly wrapped body inside of a blue plastic tarp. The tarp had been wrapped so tightly with duct tape that the officers could see the perfect outline of a human body.
Before opening the tarp, Colorado Springs detectives began collecting forensic evidence around the body. This included possible fingerprints, DNA, and other trace evidence. Once they finished processing and documenting everything around the body, it was time for the coroner to open the tarp. They needed to find out the victim's identity.
Immediately after cutting the tarp open, they discovered the victim was a young Caucasian female in her early 20s. But exactly who? And why? Why is she wrapped up in a tarp and stashed underneath a stairwell? One fact was clear to investigators. This was no accident. This was a brutal murder.
The woman's body was taken to the medical examiner's office in Colorado Springs for an autopsy. Not only did they need to find out who this victim was, but investigators also needed to figure out what happened. One of the forensic pathologist's first findings was that the woman had been sexually assaulted. When her body was placed inside the plastic tarp, whoever killed her raised her shirt towards her neck, exposing both of her breasts.
the rape kit would confirm that she'd been sexually assaulted on top of being murdered. Anytime there's an autopsy performed following a murder, investigators consider it a secondary crime scene.
The autopsy is an opportunity for homicide investigators to collect valuable forensic evidence. In this case, since the victim was sexually assaulted, there's a really good chance they'll be able to collect DNA from her body, likely through semen or other bodily fluids.
But it's not only semen that the investigators looked for when collecting evidence. They also studied her injuries to find out what type of weapon may have been used. They looked for anything that might tell them who was responsible. But before that, they needed to identify her.
To help in this process, the pathologist documented everything they could about her. Her height, her weight, any identifying markers like tattoos or birthmarks. Then, they also took the victim's fingerprints. Through those fingerprints, Colorado Springs investigators could make a positive identification. The victim was 23-year-old Jennifer Watkins.
Colorado spring detectives instantly recognized her name. Only two days before the elevator workers discovered her body, Jennifer's family reported her missing on November 6, 1999. Before her disappearance, Jennifer was a 23-year-old young mother just a few weeks away from her 24th birthday.
She lived in Colorado Springs with her husband, Michael Watkins, and their young children, a three-year-old son and an 11-month-old daughter. A few months before her family reported her missing, Jennifer got a job working for the Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where her body was discovered. This job at Memorial Hospital meant everything to Jennifer.
For the very first time in her young life, she felt like she had a real chance at a real career. A real job where she could finally make some money and take better financial care of her two small children. Although she was a young mother, she was determined to do everything she could to give her two kids the best possible chance at life. To provide them with the kind of life that she didn't have.
Jennifer's job at the hospital was also her chance to fulfill her dream of becoming a nurse one day. Jennifer's managers and co-workers seemed to like Jennifer just as much as she liked them. Her supervisors described her as a good and reliable worker, and her co-workers couldn't say one bad thing about her. They all loved working with her. Jennifer was friendly and reliable.
That's why her sudden disappearance and tragic murder came as such a shock. According to Jennifer's mom, her daughter had woken up early on November 6th to drop her two kids off at her house. This was something that Jennifer did most mornings because her mom would watch the kids while Jennifer went to work.
Michael also worked at the same hospital, but he worked in the housekeeping department and he was assigned the night shift. So Jennifer would go to the hospital from 9.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. and Michael would go in at 11 p.m. each night. So while Michael slept during the day and Jennifer went to work, Jennifer's mom watched the two small children.
According to Jennifer's mom, after dropping the kids off at her place, Jennifer went back home. As soon as she got back home, Jennifer called the hospital. She told her supervisor that she was going to be into work a little bit later that day. Her typical shift at the hospital was from 9.30 to 7.30, but on this particular day, she was going to come in a little bit later.
At 10.33 a.m., Jennifer started her shift at the hospital. Her shift that day was typical. As a dietary aid in the hospital's cafeteria, Jennifer was in charge of dropping off and picking up the food trays throughout the hospital.
She would take the trays up to the appropriate floors. The nurses would deliver the food to their patients. And then later on, Jennifer would return and collect the trays. This was Jennifer's daily project. Jennifer's mom and husband grew concerned when Jennifer didn't return home that night to pick up the kids.
This was entirely out of character for Jennifer. She was a wonderful mother who took good care of her 3-year-old son and 11-month-old daughter. She also never told her mom or Michael that she was planning on going anywhere after work that day. Once the pathologist identified Jennifer's body, investigators next needed to figure out how she was killed. So the pathologist studied her significant injuries.
When her body showed up for the autopsy, her head and face were covered with blunt force trauma injuries. During the autopsy, the pathologist noted that she had massive hemorrhaging in her head or bleeding in her brain. A hemorrhage in the head can have several causes, from head trauma to a car crash, or it can even be caused by a fall when someone hits their head hard enough.
In Jennifer's case, the pathologist believed that multiple blows caused the hemorrhaging to her head by some type of blunt object. So whoever killed Jennifer beat her to death. Based on these findings, the forensic pathologist determined that Jennifer's cause of death was blunt force head trauma and that the manner of death was a homicide.
Without a doubt from the pathologist, Jennifer died an extremely violent death. But who would want someone like Jennifer Watkins dead? She was a young mother who didn't seem to have a single enemy in the world. Colorado Springs homicide detectives quickly got to work trying to find out who would want Jennifer dead. The first step in their investigation was to speak with the other hospital staff.
For the next few days, detectives spoke with a lot of people. They interviewed doctors, nurses. The police questioned all different types of hospital staff. And everyone the police spoke to was completely cooperative. And everyone was shocked by what had happened, especially knowing that Jennifer was murdered in the city's largest hospital.
They all wanted to know who did this just as badly as the police did. After speaking with everyone who worked at the hospital, investigators checked to see who had access to the eighth floor. Investigators knew that the hospital was under renovation and only a select number of people had access to the exact location where Jennifer's body was found.
Once they found out who had access, officers went to speak with every single person. But everyone the police talked to either had an alibi or they weren't at the hospital when Jennifer was murdered. Detectives also spoke with Jennifer's supervisors at the hospital.
Jennifer's immediate supervisor told the police that he last saw Jennifer around 5.30 or 6.30 the night she was reported missing. Her supervisor said that he saw Jennifer by the cafeteria and that she was on her way to pick up the food trays throughout the hospital. Detectives also spoke with some of the hospital's nurses who worked with Jennifer.
When Jennifer would make her rounds dropping off the food trays on each floor, the nurses would then deliver the food to their patients. So this meant that Jennifer and the nurses got to know each other. One of the nurses told investigators that she saw Jennifer the day she disappeared right after she dropped off the trays. But she said she never saw Jennifer return to collect the trays.
She told officers that she thought this was strange because it just wasn't like Jennifer not to come by and pick them up. The next person the police wanted to speak to was Jennifer's husband, Michael. Naturally, one of the first people the police always want to interview is the victim's significant other. Research tells us that we are far more likely to be killed by someone we know rather than a stranger.
In fact, according to the Uniform Crime Report, in the United States, you are 50.4% more likely to be killed by someone you know. It might be a significant other, it might be a parent, or even a child or friend. In many cases, the police find a connection or some type of relationship between a murder victim and their killer.
Before investigators sat down and spoke with Michael, they discovered that he had quite the criminal record. Throughout the last several decades, Michael had been in and out of jail for various criminal charges. Some were more serious than others.
The police also discovered that Michael wasn't an easygoing guy. To many people, he was argumentative. He could be abrasive and rough around the edges. He was also known to have a short temper. Not only was he Jennifer's significant other, but he was also described as a fighter. Now the police really want to question him.
Michael agreed to sit down with the police for multiple interviews. Although he'd been described as this argumentative guy, when it came time for him to talk about his wife Jennifer's case, he was highly cooperative. He appeared without hesitation whenever the police asked him to go to the station. Any question the police asked him, he was more than happy to answer, even when it came to questions about his marriage.
Michael admitted to investigators that his relationship with Jennifer wasn't the best. Michael said the couple argued a lot and they fought. He even admitted that during some of these heated arguments, they got physical with each other. Throughout their marriage, Michael and Jennifer cheated on each other and had multiple affairs.
Although their marriage might have been rocky, Michael was adamant about one thing. He didn't murder his wife. He might not have been the best husband and father in the world, but he wasn't a cold-blooded killer. Michael told investigators that on the day Jennifer disappeared, he also called the police.
According to Michael, when Jennifer didn't return home by 9 o'clock p.m., he called Jennifer's mom to see if she had picked up the kids yet. When he found out that Jennifer hadn't picked up the kids, he knew something was wrong. He told the investigators that he called Jennifer's cell phone every 10 to 15 minutes until midnight, trying to get in touch with her. But each time he called, she never picked up. So then he called the police to report her missing.
After calling the police, a friend drove him to the hospital and he went to the parking lot where Jennifer usually parked her car at work. When he got there, he saw Jennifer's car in the parking lot but didn't see any sign of Jennifer. He decided to park his own car and walk into the hospital and speak with Jennifer's supervisor who told him that he didn't know where his wife was.
During one of his interviews with the police, Michael agreed to participate in a polygraph test. Generally speaking, if you're considered a possible person of interest in a murder investigation, you probably wouldn't sit down and take a polygraph test.
Although polygraph tests can be a very helpful investigative tool, not everyone believes they're accurate. In fact, polygraph tests are not admissible in court as evidence in criminal trials. But in Michael's case, he agreed to the polygraph because he said he had nothing to hide. He didn't murder Jennifer and he was willing to do anything to prove it.
After the test, investigators returned to Michael and told him he passed. The test showed no signs of deception when he was asked about Jennifer's murder. Besides the polygraph results, investigators had other evidence pointing towards his innocence. The police couldn't find any information suggesting that he was ever even at the hospital, either when she disappeared or when she would have been killed.
Once Michael was cleared, Colorado Springs Police shifted their investigation and went back to the physical evidence collected at the scene. After Jennifer's body was transported to the medical examiner's office, the forensics team gathered many samples from the hospital's stairwell where her body was found. They collected samples from the plastic tarp used to wrap around her body, and they also collected semen samples.
Semen was found on both the tarp and on Jennifer's pants.
When the semen samples were tested and compared, investigators discovered that the samples matched. In other words, the samples all came from the same person. But they didn't get a hit when they took the samples and ran them through CODIS, the National DNA Database. The profile didn't match any known DNA profiles in the database.
To generate a possible match, investigators collected hundreds of DNA samples. They collected samples from Jennifer's male co-workers at the hospital, and then they collected samples from all of her male relatives and friends. But when it came time to test the samples, none of the samples matched the profile from the crime scene.
Without a DNA match, Jennifer's case was about to turn cold. The investigation remained stalled even after Crimestoppers offered up reward money in the case. The tips dried up, and the police quickly found themselves without a suspect. The residents of Colorado Springs were left wondering if they would ever find out who was responsible for murdering a young mother. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. Over the years, Colorado Springs detectives never gave up or stopped thinking about Jennifer's case.
But without any new leads, most detectives once assigned to Jennifer's case were now being reassigned to newer ones. And Jennifer's family was left with the cruel reality that they might never find out who did this. By 2017, Jennifer's murder had remained unsolved for almost two decades.
Her two young children grew up to become adults themselves, and her husband, Michael Watkins, did his very best to move on with life. But by 2017, there was new hope brought to the investigation, and it came from a brand new company in Virginia.
Founded in 2016, Parabon Nanolabs is a private lab that specializes in advanced DNA testing and forensic genetic genealogy. Staffed by scientists and technologists, Parabon Nanolabs uses cutting-edge therapeutic and forensic products by leveraging the power of advanced DNA testing.
Since its beginning, they've been best known for their Snapshot Advanced DNA Analysis Platform. Snapshot takes information from an unknown individual's DNA and makes predictions of their ancestry and physical appearance, such as skin color, hair color, and eye color.
Each person has a series of different complex traits influenced by genetics and environmental factors. Snapshot works by analyzing an unknown person's DNA and using that DNA profile to generate a composite sketch of what that person might look like.
Once they have a sketch, Parabon NanoLabs can turn it over to law enforcement to help generate new investigative leads, narrow down suspect lists, or even help solve human remains cases. In 2017, Colorado Springs detectives decided to reach out to Parabon NanoLabs.
They heard about their snapshot technology and knew the company was at the forefront of genetic genealogy, combining genetic analysis with traditional, historical, genealogical research. In criminal investigations, genetic genealogy has been used to identify remains or suspects by matching the DNA of a family member.
Genetic genealogy is particularly useful in cases where law enforcement has a suspect's genetic DNA profile, but they haven't been able to make an identification. The profile doesn't match any known offender in any DNA database. With the unknown DNA sample, investigators can use genetic genealogy to track down relatives or family members of the suspect.
From there, they can narrow down a suspect list to a specific region, family, or even a single individual. Private labs like Parabon Nanolabs leverage the fact that DNA can come from many sources. For example, criminals arrested and charged with a serious crime are usually required to submit their DNA to a local or national database.
Over the years, many people have grown curious about their ancestry, so they have submitted their DNA to genealogy websites like 23andMe to learn more about their genetics. In this case, DNA is submitted voluntarily. Whether the DNA comes involuntarily or voluntarily, all of these DNA profiles can be accessed from private labs like Parabon Nanolabs.
Colorado spring detectives sent DNA samples collected from Jennifer's case to be tested at Parabon Nano Labs. They sent the semen samples collected from the crime scene and Jennifer's clothing. They already knew the samples came from the same person. They just didn't know who it was.
The hope was that Parabon Nanolabs could generate a suspect name by first discovering some of his relatives who had their DNA in a database. The case was overseen by Parabon Nanolabs' own renowned genetic genealogist, Cece Moore.
As the chief genetic genealogist of the lab, Cece Moore is an internationally recognized DNA investigative expert and pioneer in the field of genetic genealogy. Under her leadership with Parabon Nanolabs, they've generated one positive identification per week on cold cases.
Her work has brought much-needed justice to grieving families of both crime victims as well as missing persons. Between 2017 and 2018, Colorado Springs detectives worked with Parabon Nanolabs to develop a composite sketch of Jennifer's killer.
The initial test showed that her killer was likely a white man around 25 years old at the time of her murder. And the suspect had either blue or green eyes. But to narrow the search, the police and Parabon Nanolabs needed more. In 2019, the DNA profile developed from the semen found at the scene was submitted for genetic research. They needed a name to match their composite sketch.
Then, it was time for one of the investigators' newest tools, genetic genealogy. For the next 12 months, scientists at Parabon Nanolab searched for a family name or relative of Jennifer's killer. They searched for anyone that could help them identify the man who eluded them for over 20 years.
Finally, in the summer of 2020, they got a hit. In August of 2020, Colorado Springs police detectives were notified of a potential lead on the unknown DNA profile. Parabon Nanolab had identified a guy named Ricky Sievert.
Colorado police discovered that Ricky Sievert was 29 years old at the time of Jennifer's murder. They also found out that he physically resembled the composite sketch. He was a white male in his 20s with green eyes. But even more interesting was where Ricky Sievert worked at the time of Jennifer's murder.
Detectives discovered that Ricky worked in the Colorado Springs Memorial Hospital Maintenance Department since April of 1998, the year before Jennifer was murdered. Since he worked in maintenance, he had access to the eighth floor. The name Ricky Sievert wasn't foreign to Colorado Springs investigators. Early in their investigation, the police interviewed Ricky about Jennifer's case.
He was one of the first people the police questioned. During his initial interview, Ricky told the police that he worked the swing shift at the hospital the day Jennifer disappeared. His shift was from 3 to 11 p.m. But Ricky denied having anything to do with the murder. In fact, he said that he didn't know Jennifer Watkins. He said he had never met her before.
Although he worked at the same hospital and had access to the eighth floor, he had nothing to do with it. Without any evidence linking him to the murder, the police cleared him, and he wasn't considered a suspect, at least not back in 1999. As soon as Parabon Nanolabs identified the DNA profile as belonging to Ricky Sievert, Colorado police wanted to speak with him.
But there was one huge problem. Ricky Sievert is dead. Ricky Sievert died in a car accident on November 2, 2001, on Highway 94, just east of Colorado Springs. He was killed two short years after Jennifer's murder. Unfortunately, investigators could never confront him about Jennifer's case.
Although investigators couldn't speak with him face-to-face, they still had the cold, hard evidence. In 2020, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation analyzed DNA obtained from Ricky Sievert's family members, including his daughter. As soon as they found out who Ricky Sievert was, the police contacted his family members and told him about his connection to Jennifer's murder.
Immediately, Ricky's daughter provided a DNA sample so that her sample could be compared to the DNA collected at Jennifer's crime scene. If the police couldn't get Ricky's DNA, the next best thing was to get his family's DNA.
The test determined that 99.99994% of the population could be excluded from being Jennifer's killer, except for Ricky Sievert. On October 1st, 2020, Jennifer's case was sent to the 4th Judicial District Attorney's Office for review. Two months later, in December 2020, the court ruled on the case.
Officials determined that Ricky Sievert was responsible for Jennifer's murder. The decision might provide some answers for Jennifer Watkins' family and children, but it doesn't mean justice. Since Ricky Sievert was killed two years after murdering Jennifer, her family will never see him be held accountable. We also may never find out a motive.
We will never know why Ricky targeted Jennifer that day, why he sexually assaulted her, or why he killed her, wrapped her body in that plastic tarp, and left her underneath that stairwell on the hospital's eighth floor. It's unclear whether Jennifer and Ricky Sievert had met before she was killed.
Although they both worked at the hospital, it's possible that the day he killed her was the very first time Sievert had ever met Jennifer. The only evidence linking Ricky Sievert to Jennifer is the DNA he left behind on her body and clothing.
After almost two decades of searching, Colorado Spring investigators, with the help of Parabon Nanolabs, were able to use genetic genealogy to solve this cold case.
Following the December 2020 court ruling deeming Ricky Sievert responsible for Jennifer's murder, Colorado Springs Police Department Chief Vince Niskey made a public statement, quote, After all these years, we are grateful to finally give Jennifer Watkins' family the answers they deserve.
Not for one moment did we ever lose sight of what was important, finding the truth for the Watkins family. End quote. He went on to thank all of the agencies and units that helped solve the case for the last 21 years.
If you'd like to learn more about donating to a cold case, please visit justicedrive.com. Justice Drive is a crowdfunding portal designed to help law enforcement agencies solve crimes just like Jennifer's. You can also get involved by participating in Parabon Nanolab's Snapshot Research Study.
You can join the study by logging onto their website and answering questions about your ancestry and appearance, taking images of yourself using their study iPhone app, and uploading a DNA genotype file from a recreational genomics company if you have one. By participating, you'll help detectives solve crimes around the world just like Jennifer's.
In addition, you can help solve more crimes by expanding the database that helps investigators bring justice to the victims. You can make a difference with this one. Please see the links in the show notes for more information about Parabon Nanolabs, as well as information about Justice Drive. To share your thoughts on Jennifer Watkins' story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook.
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