Troy and LaDonna French
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. 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. In the early morning hours of February 4th, 2012, Troy and LaDonna French were gunned down inside their North Carolina home.

The couple awoke to screams from their teenage daughter who said there was a man inside her room holding a knife to her throat. But before the gunman fled the home, he left a few drops of blood on the staircase. Could new advancements in DNA technology finally track down the man responsible for murdering the French's? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 180, The Murders of Troy and LaDonna French.

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.

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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 episode. In the early morning hours of February 4th, 2012, 19-year-old Whitley French woke up after hearing a strange squeaking sound from one of the floorboards in her bedroom. She opened her eyes and saw a man standing in the middle of her second floor bedroom.

The man wasn't her father or anyone else she recognized. So she did what almost anyone else would probably do in her situation. She screamed. Who was this man, and what was he doing inside her Reidsville, North Carolina home? But before she could answer any of those questions, the man standing in her bedroom was holding a knife up against her throat.

He said if she made another peep, he would kill her. And if she stayed quiet, she might just get lucky and survive. Whitley's parents, who were also in the house sleeping in their bedroom, heard their daughter's screams. As soon as they heard the screams, Troy and his wife, LaDonna French, jumped out of bed and raced upstairs to their daughter's bedroom. They knew something was wrong because they had never heard their daughter scream like that before.

But before they could make it up to Whitley's bedroom, they were both shot multiple times with a 9mm handgun, killing them almost instantly. LaDonna was shot in the wrist, hand, chest, and head. Her husband, Troy, was shot in the chest and back. After the shooting, the intruder quickly ran out of the house through the front door, leaving 19-year-old Whitley alive in her bedroom.

At 2.12 a.m., Whitley grabbed her cell phone and dialed 911 as fast as possible. The call was routed to the Rockingham Sheriff's Office. Here's a small excerpt of that phone call. I'm getting 911. Broke into your house and shot your parents? Yeah. Ma'am, we're going to get somebody to you. Confirm your address. 1 Pinewood Road. Yeah, finally.

It was over 16 minutes from the 911 call until the first responding officers arrived at the French's house.

Unfortunately, this part of North Carolina was extremely rural, and the nearest police officers were several miles away. Highway Patrol Trooper Richard Cauley was the first to arrive at the French's house at 2.28 a.m. When he arrived, he pounded on the door, begging Whitley to let him inside. He said he was a police officer and he was there to help her.

While still on the phone with 911 dispatchers, Whitley opened the door and let Trooper Richard Colley inside the house. As soon as he walked inside, he saw the bodies of two adults, one male and one female. It was Whitley's parents, Troy and LaDonna. He started performing CPR on Troy, but he knew there wasn't much he could do.

Nine minutes after Officer Richard Colley arrived, EMS arrived at the house, but they were too late as well. Troy and LaDonna French had both been shot multiple times and pronounced dead at the scene. LaDonna was 45 and her husband Troy was dead at 48. Their daughter Whitley was taken to a hospital in downtown Reidsville at 2.40 a.m. to be treated for minor injuries.

The murders of Troy and LaDonna French inside their own home sent shockwaves throughout Reidsville, North Carolina. This rural part of North Carolina had never seen a crime like this before. Troy and LaDonna French weren't the type of people you'd expect to hear about being gunned down inside their own home. Troy and LaDonna lived in the small community of Bethany in a house located at 791 Pinewood Road.

a town that on its website prides itself on being one of the best places to live in the entire state of North Carolina. With a population of fewer than 10,000 people, Bethany has a rural feel and most living there own their own homes, like the French's. It's certainly not a place known for violent home evasions. The French's neighbors and friends were shocked and devastated when they heard the news.

Who would want to shoot and kill these two innocent people? Two people who many described as good and upstanding citizens of their community. And why? Was this a home invasion or robbery gone wrong? Why did the intruder only shoot and kill Troy and LaDonna, but not their teenage daughter? Troy, whose first name was Douglas, but went by his middle name Troy, and LaDonna French were both good people with many close friends in the community.

Both were natives of Rockingham, North Carolina, dedicated to their church, children, friends, and community. They met as teenagers at Rockingham High School, two grades apart. Troy was a senior, and LaDonna was a sophomore. In high school, Troy was a star athlete on the school's basketball and baseball teams. LaDonna, who stood at barely 5'1", was a popular cheerleader.

Shortly after high school graduation, Troy and LaDonna got married. Troy served in the Navy for almost 10 years before working at Duke Energy for the last 22 years. And LaDonna worked as a patient service advocate for the company Shapiro Eye Care. Before their deaths, they were married for 26 years. Troy and LaDonna had two children together, a boy and a girl.

Whitley was born in 1992 and Hunter was born five years later. The French family was what many people described as the all-American family. They were extremely close-knit and did everything together. When Troy and LaDonna weren't watching and supporting their kids in sports, you could find them in church. Both were highly involved at the Reidsville Bible Chapel and were never known to miss a Sunday church service.

LaDonna was even a pianist for the church choir. Neither Troy nor his wife LaDonna were what anyone would describe as your typical murder victims. They didn't have any enemies. They lived in a rural but especially safe part of North Carolina. They went to church every Sunday morning. Sure, they might have shared some conservative views and traditional family values, but that didn't mean they became anyone's targets.

And this was another reason why their murders didn't make any sense. Troy and LaDonna's autopsies were performed the following day. LaDonna had suffered a fatal gunshot wound to her head that severed her spinal cord. The bullet was still inside her head at the autopsy. She also had several gunshot wounds to her wrist, hand, and shoulder. But all of those had exit wounds that meant the bullet traveled through her body but left.

What was interesting to the medical examiner was that LaDonna had stippling marks on her body near the gunshot wounds. This seemed to suggest that she was shot from close range. Troy suffered a bullet wound that entered his chest and traveled down and to the right. The bullet ripped through his stomach, liver, and one of his lungs. He also had a second gunshot wound in the middle of his lower back that exited through his hip.

But unlike his wife, LaDonna, he had no stippling marks indicated that he was shot from farther away. Hundreds of people attended Troy and LaDonna's funeral, which was held at the same church they got married at over 20 years earlier. And the one question on everyone's minds at the funeral was, who did this?

About 10 minutes after paramedics arrived and pronounced Troy and LaDonna dead, their daughter Whitley was transported to the hospital in downtown Reidsville. She had a cut on her left arm that required two stitches and a burn mark on her chest. But her injuries were far less severe than her parents, who had both been shot multiple times. So after being treated at the hospital for minor injuries, she was released later that morning.

But as soon as she was released from the emergency room, detectives wanted to speak with her and get her version of what happened. She was the only other person inside the home at the time of the murders. At the time, Whitley was staying at her parents' house for the first time since starting college classes at ECU, East Carolina University. About a month earlier, she moved out of the house to attend college. So she was only visiting at her parents' house when the home invasion happened.

Whitley told detectives that the day before, February 3rd, her parents bought a new car at the Nissan dealership on Freeway Drive in Reidsville. Then a couple hours later, she said she returned home from ECU. She planned to spend a few nights at her parents' house, and this was the first time that she had been home since leaving for college. Whitley's brother, Hunter, who was only 14 then, wasn't home that weekend.

He had a swim meet several hours away and wouldn't be home until the end of the weekend. This left Whitley as the only other person inside the house when the intruder broke in. If Hunter hadn't been at that swim meet, he might have been home and possibly killed. After the shooting, Hunter's aunt and uncle told him the devastating news about what happened to his parents.

On Friday afternoon, Whitley said she went across the street to her grandparents' house while her dad, Troy, was making dinner. Donald and Nancy Mosley were LaDonna's parents, who lived in the same neighborhood directly across the street. She said she was at her grandparents' house for less than an hour, then walked across the street back to her parents' house once dinner was ready.

After dinner, Whitley and her parents went to watch a boys and girls doubleheader basketball game at Rockingham County High. This was the same high school where their son Hunter was a student. According to Whitley, after the basketball game, they all returned home. She said she went to her bedroom on the second floor where she opened her laptop to watch some Netflix before bed around 1030 p.m.

She assumed her parents went to bed sometime after that. Her parents' bedroom was on the home's first floor while hers was on the second. Around 1.30 a.m., Whitley said she woke up to use the restroom and closed her laptop that was left open. After that, she fell back asleep until she was awakened by a man standing in the middle of her bedroom. She said she had no idea who this man was, so she screamed for her parents to come help.

That's when the intruder ran out of the bedroom toward the staircase and heard her parents. She said the man shot at her mom first as she was the first one to reach the staircase. She was shot several times, including the wrist, hand, chest, and head. After being shot in the head, she immediately fell backward and hit her head on the floor at the bottom of the staircase. Her dad, Troy, witnessed the entire episode.

Before Troy could even take a step forward, the intruder shot at him too, and he was hit in the chest. But instead of falling directly to the floor like LaDonna, he tried to get away by running toward the kitchen. That's when the intruder followed him down the stairs and shot him several times in the back until he was dead too. After the shooting, Whitley said the man tried to run out of the house through the front door, but the door was locked.

and LaDonna's body was in the way. So he moved LaDonna's body, unlocked the door hatch, and ran outside. Then Whitley ran back to her bedroom, grabbed her cell phone, and dialed 911. When detectives questioned Whitley about what this man looked like, she wasn't able to provide much of a description. She said the only thing she saw was that he was wearing a hoodie, and she didn't get a good look at his face.

She didn't see his eye color, his hair color, or anything else. And besides being a male, that was all she knew. So her description of the intruder was essentially useless for the investigators. Stay tuned. You won't believe the twist that has investigators rethinking everything they thought they knew. 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. Back at Troy and LaDonna's house, investigators with the Rockingham Sheriff's Department were looking for evidence. They needed to find proof that aligned with Whitley's story.

It's not like the police doubted her version. It was just the entire story seemed straight out of a Hollywood movie. The French's were God fearing people who never skipped church on Sunday. They lived the all American lifestyle. Then one night, a man wearing a hoodie broke into a locked house in a safe neighborhood and murdered them.

But again, investigators didn't doubt Whitley's story. They just needed evidence to support it. Within hours, the police performed their own reenactment of the shooting inside the French's house. And everything they found seemed to line up with Whitley's story about what she said happened. Crazy and outlandish tale or not, she might be telling the truth.

One of the first items the police searched for inside the house was the murder weapon, the gun used to shoot Troy and LaDonna. At 2.05 p.m. on February 4th, a search warrant was executed to look for the murder weapon inside the house, but they were never able to find it. They did, however, find an empty gun box for a high-point 9mm handgun, but it was empty, so no gun was found inside.

But then detectives received an interesting tip. When speaking with LaDonna's parents, Donald and Nancy Mosley, who lived across the street, they said the gun had been missing for several weeks. Although he can't be too sure when the gun exactly went missing. According to Donald Mosley, Troy said the gun went missing sometime in December 2011, several weeks before the murders.

Donald Mosley said Troy told him that 14-year-old Hunter and one of his friends had been caught playing with a gun one day. So to prevent Hunter or his friends from doing that, Troy decided to lock up the gun and hide it somewhere in the house.

But when he found out the gun was missing a few weeks later, he said he didn't want to report it to the police. He said he didn't want his son Hunter to get into any type of trouble in case he was the one who stole it. So although Troy and LaDonna knew the 9mm handgun was missing, they never reported it. And when the police executed the search warrant several hours after the shooting, it was nowhere to be found.

Another search warrant allowed detectives to seize several items from the house, including LaDonna's purse, Troy's wallet, and Whitley's laptop and cell phone. They also took fingerprint samples from Whitley, Hunter, and both of their parents. All of this evidence seemed to suggest the police were considering someone close to the family may have committed the murders.

The biggest piece of evidence the police collected inside the house came from the stairway. This is where Whitley said the intruder shot her parents. When police examined the stairway, they found a fascinating clue. Isolated drops of blood. Investigators found a total of five drops of blood. One drop of blood was found on the stair railing, and four more drops were found on the stairs themselves.

But who did the blood belong to? The police knew it couldn't be Troy or LaDonna's blood because they never made it that far up the staircase, according to Whitley's story. Instead, they thought it could be Whitley's blood because she had a cut on her arm. But they also wondered if the blood could have belonged to the shooter. But why would he be bleeding?

So without knowing who the blood belonged to, they collected and submitted it for testing. During the search of the house, detectives removed the closet door at the bottom of the staircase right where LaDonna was shot. The door was removed so the bullet lodged inside the wood could be tested. If they could remove the bullet, they could determine the type of gun used in the shootings.

At the same time they removed the bullet, Hunter came forward with some important information. Hunter told the authorities that he and his friend didn't steal his father's missing 9mm. He also said that before it went missing a few months earlier, his dad Troy had used it because he had to shoot a raccoon in the backyard.

Hoping that the shell casings might still be in the yard, Hunter took investigators to the backyard where he said the dad used it to shoot the raccoon. Sure enough, the police found two shell casings, presumably left behind by the missing 9mm. The bullet from the closet door and the two shell casings from the backyard went to the state crime lab so that ballistics testing could be performed.

And when the results came back, they matched. The same gun used to shoot and kill Troy and LaDonna was the same gun that Troy said went missing from the house back in December. That meant the French's were killed with their own gun. This also meant the killer knew Troy and LaDonna and had access to their guns.

A crucial detail indicating that the French's knew their murderer was that Whitley locked the front door on the night of the home invasion. So the intruder must have possessed the knowledge about how to access the house. Whitley also said that the family kept a hideaway key underneath a mat at the back porch. But when the police looked for this hidden key, it was still under the mat.

And when they tested it for DNA and fingerprints, they found an unknown DNA profile. The DNA belonged to an unknown male unrelated to the French's. Over the entire first week of the investigation, the Rockingham Sheriff's Department conducted hundreds of interviews with the French's friends, neighbors, and other family members.

They also collected DNA samples from everyone who had had recent contact with Troy and LaDonna, including Whitley, Hunter, and LaDonna's parents who lived across the street. But none of the interviews or DNA samples seemed to point to any one particular suspect.

One week into the investigation, the spokesperson from the Rockingham Sheriff's Department held a press conference to provide an update on the investigation. By then, the murders were already a week old and no arrest had been made. The press conference simply told people that no suspects had been identified yet, but the department was working on the case the best they could.

They assured people the case wasn't cold and they would soon have a suspect. But that's not what happened. The Rockingham Sheriff's Department didn't make an arrest the following week either, or the next, or the fourth week. Eventually, months went by and no one was arrested. Over the next several months, people became increasingly frustrated with how little progress was made in the case.

Despite having five agencies involved, the Rockingham County Sheriff's Department, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, and the Greensboro Police Department, the case almost seemed like it would never be solved. The most promising piece of evidence in the case seemed to be the unidentified drops of blood found on the French's staircase.

One drop of blood was found on the railing, and the four drops of blood were found on the stairs themselves. But the only problem with the blood evidence was the police had no one to match it to. Throughout the first 12 months of the investigation, the police collected DNA samples from over 50 people, including Whitley, her brother Hunter, and everyone else who had close contact with the French's.

But none of their DNA matched the DNA found on the staircase. And the police had no idea how the blood droplets got there. The only thing they knew for sure was that there was foreign DNA on the stairs. That's it. And the blood droplets also seemed to contradict what the police thought early in the investigation, that the killer had to be someone close to the French's.

This explained how the intruder would have known how to get inside this locked house and how they could steal and use Troy's 9mm handgun. But the blood evidence seemed to contradict this theory. The blood didn't match anyone in the French family or the other 50 people the police tested during the first year of the investigation. The DNA also didn't match anyone in the system.

They didn't get any hits when they ran it through CODIS, the National DNA Database. So traditional DNA testing only revealed that the DNA belonged to a male. But that was it. After a year of investigating, the Rockingham Sheriff's Department was willing to do anything and everything it took to make an arrest.

When all of the other leads had dried up, they turned to the U.S. Department of Justice DOJ Asset Forfeiture Program to pursue alternative forms of DNA testing. This DOJ program uses forfeited assets to help fund initiatives or programs that help deter criminal activity or dismantle illegal operations.

This program supports federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies across the country. In this case, the Rockingham Sheriff's Department would use the funds to fund additional DNA testing on the unknown blood droplets from the staircase. Once the Sheriff's Department had secured the funding from the DOJ, they submitted the DNA samples to scientists at the University of North Texas.

Laboratory scientists performed familial DNA testing on the sample and determined that the perpetrator was someone close to the French's, but it wasn't a blood relative. Instead, familial DNA testing revealed the perpetrator was related to Whitley's boyfriend, John Alvarez.

One of the first people the police got a DNA sample from was Whitley's boyfriend, John Alvarez. But according to the University of North Texas lab, the DNA wasn't an exact match to John Alvarez, but there was a familial match. In other words, the DNA came from someone in John's family. So it could be either John's father or John's brother.

This information was massive, not only for the police, but for the French family, especially for Whitley. It came as a complete shock that someone connected to Whitley's boyfriend, John Alvarez, was the person responsible for murdering her parents. But who exactly in John Alvarez's family was the perpetrator? His father? His brother?

Could it actually be John Alvarez, even if the original DNA testing suggested otherwise? And did Whitley, or her boyfriend, know anything about it? Once it was determined that the unknown blood droplets inside the house came from someone in Whitley's boyfriend's family, the University of North Texas scientists performed a Y-chromosome STR analysis.

This test allows authorities to determine whether two male DNA samples share a common paternal lineage. But here's where things get even more interesting. This Y-chromosome STR analysis showed that the perpetrator did not share a Y-STR lineage with John Alvarez.

seemingly eliminating John's father and brother as possible suspects. By this point, the detectives were at another standstill. They had finally identified a promising lead with the blood samples, but further testing proved more confusing than ever. The DNA didn't match Whitley's boyfriend, John Alvarez's,

But a familial DNA test suggested that it could be a male family member, possibly his father or brother. But when they performed YSTR testing on the sample, this further complicated things. The test revealed that the suspect didn't share a YSTR lineage or father with John Alvarez.

So this information seemed to eliminate both his father and his brother as possible suspects. But how could that be? If DNA testing performed at the University of North Texas revealed the DNA came from a relative of Whitley's boyfriend, then who is it?

In February 2015, three years after the murders, the authorities with the Rockingham County Sheriff's Department heard about the debut of the Parabon Snapshot DNA Phenotyping Service, a type of genetic testing that creates a sketch of how someone might look simply based on the genetic markers of their DNA.

In criminal cases, phenotyping is incredibly helpful because it can take unknown DNA collected from a crime scene to create a sketch of the suspect. Snapshot analyzes genetic markers in the DNA, like skin color, eye color, or hair color, and uses it to develop a rough sketch.

Of course, it's not always perfect and it doesn't always generate an identical sketch, but it is helpful for many criminal investigations like the French's. Once they heard about Snapshot, authorities in Rockingham took the unknown DNA in the case and had a sketch of the suspect created.

By April 2015, DNA samples from the case were taken to a quesogen, one of the genotyping labs that supports Parabon's unique brand of DNA analysis. Unlike most DNA labs, Parabon performs genotyping of single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNPs.

the millions of markers on the genome that collectively encode the genetic information that accounts for much of the trait differences in people. In the French's case, scientists at Parabon took 30 nanograms of DNA from the staircase.

From the 30 nanograms of DNA, they generated over 850,000 SNPs from the sample, which was more than enough genetic information to create a sketch to predict how the perpetrator might have looked, as well as some of his ancestry. On May 7, 2015, Parabon notified detectives in North Carolina that they had finished the snapshot sketch of the perp.

Based on the genetic markers, they were confident that the shooter had fair or very fair skin, brown or hazel eyes, dark hair, and little evidence of freckling. Face morphology analysis suggested he had a wide facial structure and a non-protruding nose and chin.

Finally, and most importantly for the investigation, the snapshot analysis concluded the suspect had a mixed ancestry, a roughly 50-50 combination of European and Latino ancestry consistent with someone with one European and one Latino parent.

As soon as the authorities had Parabon's snapshot sketch of the perpetrator, they turned their attention back to Whitley's boyfriend, John Alvarez. But they already knew DNA testing ruled him out as a suspect. They also knew why STR analysis indicated the perpetrator did not share a paternal lineage with John.

But what was strangely interesting was the sketch looked a lot like John's brother, Jose Alvarez Jr. If you put Parabon's sketch side by side with a photo of Jose Alvarez Jr., you would almost think they were identical. After the snapshot sketch was created, Detective Matthews from the Rockingham County Sheriff's Office said, quote,

The snapshot ancestry analysis and phenotype predictions suggested we should not eliminate Jose Alvarez Jr. as a suspect despite the YSTR results. The likeliness of the snapshot composite with his driver's license photo is quite striking, end quote.

But how could anyone explain this? Again, the YSTR testing essentially ruled out Whitley's boyfriend, John Alvarez's father, as well as his brother, Jose Jr., as suspects. But detectives were determined to keep digging to try and find some explanation for why this could happen.

Within weeks of the snapshot, Detective Matthews from the Rockingham County Sheriff's Office requested a DNA sample from Jose Alvarez Jr., as well as his father, Jose Alvarez Sr. Fortunately, they both consented to provide DNA samples, so warrants weren't needed. Once the samples were collected, they were sent to the state crime lab on May 13, 2015.

But before they received the results, someone in the French family had some major news to share. Just three days after Jose Alvarez Jr. and Jose Alvarez Sr. submitted their DNA, Whitley and her boyfriend, John Alvarez, got married on May 16, 2015.

Although his brother and father were both considered possible suspects in her parents' murder, Whitley and John got married at Summerfield Farm. The DNA testing took about three weeks, and the final results came back on June 9, 2015. The results finally revealed Troy and LaDonna's killer after three long years of waiting.

Without a doubt, the blood on the staircase inside the French home came from Jose Alvarez Jr. The test results also showed that Jose Alvarez Sr. is not his biological father, which explains why the STRs didn't match. DNA tests confirmed Whitley's boyfriend and now husband's brother was the one who committed the murders.

Jose Alvarez Jr. was arrested on August 25, 2015, on two counts of capital murder. He made his first court appearance the following day on August 26, where he was formally indicted. On September 28, North Carolina prosecutors announced they planned to pursue the death penalty against Jose Alvarez Jr. Although executions are few and far between in North Carolina,

Being charged with two counts of capital murder meant Alvarez was eligible for the death penalty if convicted. But instead of taking his case to court and risking the chance of being sentenced to death, he agreed to plead guilty to the murders on July 8, 2016. In exchange for his guilty plea, he was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

We might never know exactly what happened that night or why Jose Alvarez Jr. murdered Troy and LaDonna French, but this is what prosecutors and the police say. Investigators believe Alvarez had repeatedly broken into the French's home over six months after finding a spare key and making a copy. During one of these break-ins, he stole Troy's 9mm handgun used in the murders.

Alvarez's defense attorney, Vincent Rabille, said he initially went into the house out of curiosity after seeing the address on Whitley's driver's license, his younger brother's girlfriend. His defense attorney said he then became obsessed with the house. Sometimes Alvarez would go into the house when no one else was home. Other times he broke in and watched as the family slept.

He did this over and over again for approximately six months before the murders happened. His attorney said, quote, he was fixated on smells. It was a model home. Everything was new and freshly painted, end quote. But things escalated when he broke into the house on February 4th, 2012.

Instead of watching them as they slept, he accidentally woke Wickley up in her bedroom. She screamed and her parents, Troy and LaDonna, ran out of their bedroom to come help. When they reached the staircases, Alvarez switched from his knife to the 9mm handgun. He then used the French's own stolen gun to shoot and kill both of them.

Investigators believe that when Alvarez went to reach for the gun in his pocket, he accidentally cut himself with the knife that he was carrying. This explains why they found those tiny drops of blood on the staircase. If he hadn't accidentally cut himself, the police might not have been able to identify him, and scientists might not have been able to connect him to the murders through his DNA.

The murders of Troy and LaDonna French highlight the limitations of traditional DNA testing. All the DNA evidence needed to solve the murders was collected at the crime scene. But without law enforcement's willingness to try new forensic analysis like DNA phenotyping and YSTR analysis, this killer might not have been brought to justice.

Advanced forensic testing can help bridge the gap and solve cases that traditional DNA testing simply can't. Today, Whitley French remains married to John Alvarez, the brother of the person responsible for murdering her parents.

In a statement published by AP News, LaDonna's sister, Kathy Hayes, said that Jose Alvarez Jr. has not only made the French family suffer, but has also made his own family suffer. Whitley married the man whose brother gruesomely murdered her family. Although we may never understand why,

at least through the development of DNA forensics, we are able to learn who. To share your thoughts on this week's story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case.

Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us. You can also help support the show through Patreon. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about.

Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.

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to find out how you can become involved. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.