I-65 Killer
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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. The year was 1987. Small town USA where life moved at a slower pace. Interstate 65 was a quiet stretch of road that weaved through several states.

But on one fateful day, the calmness of this sleepy town would be shattered forever. Like any other quiet night, Vicky checked in hotel guests. Little did she know that her ordinary shift would soon transform into a nightmare. As the sun rose, disturbed hotel guests rushed to the lobby, their voices filled with panic and disbelief. The hotel lobby had been ravaged.

But Vicki, the 41-year-old clerk, was nowhere to be found. As the officers investigated the scene, one walked around the building, unaware of the horrifying truth that awaited. There, hidden by sight, lay Vicki, her body battered and broken, a victim of unspeakable violence. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 182, The I-65 Killer. ♪

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 compelling cases, conduct in-depth fact-based research, and produce and edit this weekly show. You can support my work in two simple ways. Become a valued patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales and leave a positive review. Before we get to this week's episode, we've got three new supporters that I want to thank.

Thank you so much to Ryan M., Mike D., and Miguel G. for becoming the show's newest patrons. Now, let's get to this week's episode. On February 20th, 1987, 41-year-old Vicki Heath was getting ready to start her long overnight shift at a Super 8 motel in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, a small town about 40 miles away from Louisville.

Although most people probably haven't heard of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, it's still famous for being Abraham Lincoln's birthplace. Vicki had moved to Radcliffe, Kentucky, several months before February 20, 1987, another small town. She moved to Radcliffe with her new fiancé looking to start fresh. She was recently divorced from her first husband and the father of her two kids.

Since her kids were already grown adults by then and had moved out of the house, Radcliffe gave Vicki and her new fiancé a fresh start together. When Vicki and her fiancé got to Radcliffe, the first thing she did was look for work. They didn't necessarily need the money, but Vicki wanted to keep herself busy. Now that her kids were out of the house, they were grown, she wasn't the type of person to just sit around and do nothing.

Plus, she wanted to help out her fiancé to bring in a little extra cash. So she decided to get a job working at the Super 8 Motel in the neighboring town of Elizabethtown. Today, the Super 8 Motel Company has become one of the world's largest budget hotel chains with over 2,000 locations worldwide. Now, these motels aren't known for their luxurious rooms or fancy amenities.

The reason why they've become the world's largest budget hotel chain in the world is that they offer the basics and can charge very cheap nightly rates. Back then, a room at a Super 8 motel would only run you about $8.88 per night, matching its name. At the Super 8 motel, Vicky worked as a night auditor.

She was in charge of supervising the motel's managers, and she also worked as a front desk clerk for the overnight shift. Now, it wasn't the best job in the entire world since it required her to work long hours all night long. But Vicky liked it. She liked the extra paychecks, and she liked having her own money outside of her fiancé. Plus, she enjoyed interacting with the motel guests.

She also liked it because most of the night shifts were pretty quiet and she could do things like catch up on her favorite romance novels. This particular Super 8 was one of two motels in the area. The other one was a days in a few minutes across town. The two motels were separated by a large empty parking lot where truckers would usually pull in for the night to get some sleep in between trips.

Other than the occasional trucker who stopped in to get some shut-eye, this particular area was really quiet. On the night of February 20th, 1987, Vicki got to work in the early evening like she did almost every shift. It was supposed to be a pretty quiet night because only about 50% of the motel was booked for the night. So she thought that it was going to be a really easy shift and she could catch up on some reading.

The motel manager stayed with Vicky until about 11 o'clock. Later on, the manager reported that everything seemed really normal when he left that night. Vicky was left in charge of the motel until the morning crew got there. He said he didn't remember seeing anything out of the ordinary. But by 6.30 a.m. the following morning, life at the motel was in a complete disarray.

Around 6.30 a.m. on February 21st, a few of the motel's guests were ready to check out of their rooms. But when they arrived at the front desk, they noticed that the entire place was a complete disaster. Paper was thrown all over the floor, and the front desk looked like a tornado had passed through it. The guests also found it weird that no one was there to check them out.

At 6.38 a.m., one of the guests decided to call the police. The guest told the police that the motel lobby looked like something terrible had happened there, like maybe the front desk had been robbed sometime during the middle of the night. Several minutes after the motel guest called the police, an officer arrived. And when they got there, they confirmed the situation. The entire front lobby was a disaster.

Several items from the desk were thrown all over the floor. The payphone had been ripped out of the wall. And according to him, the place looked like whoever was working there was in a brawl. The officer decided to call for backup. He had no idea whether this was a robbery or even something worse. So he figured at that point that he needed some backup.

And while waiting for others to show up, he started looking around just outside the motel for any sign of Vicky or anyone else that was scheduled to work. He thought it was strange that no one was working because like any motel, someone was always scheduled to work the front desk. And he also thought it was odd that no one called the police during the night. Why wouldn't the employee pick up the phone and call for help if the place had been robbed?

As the officer walked around the side of the motel waiting for backup, he stopped dead in his tracks. He made a horrific discovery. It was a motionless body. On the side of the motel next to the dumpster, he found the badly beaten, bloody, and muddy body of 41-year-old Vicki Heath.

When Vicky's body was found, she was still wearing her sweater and plaid skirt she wore when she started her shift at the motel. However, there was something clearly wrong with her clothes. Almost everything she wore had rips and tears all over, as if someone might have ripped the clothes off of her. This also closely matched the inside of the motel's lobby, suggesting and confirming that she had been in some sort of violent struggle.

Vicky's autopsy painted an even more gruesome picture of her last moments alive. Besides being attacked inside the lobby where she worked, she had also been sexually assaulted. After she was assaulted, she was shot twice in the head with a .38 caliber handgun. One of the bullets had exited Vicky's skull and was later recovered by investigators. The biggest piece of evidence the police had in the beginning was Vicky's rape kit results.

The medical examiner recovered foreign DNA from her sexual assault kit. They were also able to find unknown DNA on some of her clothing. But even with the DNA, there was still one big problem. The police had no way of testing the DNA to determine who it belonged to or be able to use it to identify Vicky's killer.

So all they did was collect the DNA and bag it for future testing while they kept investigating. Word about Vicki's murder at the motel spread quickly throughout Kentucky. Violent crime and murder just doesn't happen in this part of the state.

It was a tiny, all-American town where everyone knew each other. And if you weren't from there, you were probably just a trucker passing through town. It wasn't a place known for rapes and murders. Vicki's murder also made people question whether a violent killer was out there on the loose. If Vicki could be targeted while at work, who else could become a victim?

Who would want to target a 40-something-year-old woman reading at work? Besides the DNA from her rape kit, the investigators found another promising clue early on. They discovered a pair of muddy footprints on the ground behind the motel. The footprints started near Vicky's body and ended near the motel's parking lot, suggesting her killer might have left the prints.

The thought was Vicky's killer dragged her behind the motel, assaulted and killed her, then hopped in his vehicle in the parking lot and drove away. But before the cops could do anything with the footprints, they were gone. Unfortunately, the entire area surrounding Vicky's body was covered in snow. The night before, temperatures hovered slightly below freezing, meaning the place had snowfall overnight.

And as a result of the snowfall, most of the ground around the motel was covered in snow. The snow presented a huge problem for investigators because when the snow melted, the footprints and the tire tracks from the parking lot all disappeared. So unfortunately, by the time they realized the snow was melting, it was also destroying all of the evidence. 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. Vicky's murder quickly stumped investigators. As soon as her fiancé, ex-husband, adult children, and everyone who stayed at the Super 8 motel were cleared, the investigation was stuck at square one.

No one had any idea who would have wanted to target Vicky or what the motive might have been. Was this a robbery gone wrong? Was Vicky specifically targeted that night? Or was this some sort of random attack? Did someone see Vicky working alone in the lobby that night and then decide to attack her? Or something far more sinister?

The only truth that made sense to investigators at the time was that this seemed like a one-off attack. They didn't think, at least early on, that this was a premeditated crime. The police thought Vicky's killer might have just seen that she was alone and he took advantage.

So in the early part of the investigation, no one in the police department considered this premeditated. They all simply assumed it was a one-off situation, a one-off attack, and maybe this was just a crime of opportunity. Unfortunately, once all of the initial leads dried up, Vicky's murder turned cold.

Two years after Vicki was killed, 24-year-old Peggy Gill arrived at the Days Inn on May 2, 1989. It was a normal Thursday night, and Peggy was scheduled to work the overnight shift. Earlier that night, Peggy spent the evening with her dad, Terry, whose 51st birthday was the following day. They spent the night together planning his birthday party and putting together the finishing touches on his birthday cake.

Then before heading out the door to work, she turned around and kissed her dad goodbye. Terry had no idea that this would be the last time he would see his daughter alive. On most nights, Peggy worked the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift at the Days Inn. Most people hated that shift, but not Peggy. According to one of her managers, she was one of the few employees who actually enjoyed working the late shift.

She actually preferred it over the day shift because the nights were a lot slower and she could use some of the time while at work to do some things that she liked, like drawing and cross-stitching. The Days Inn where Peggy worked was near the intersection of I-65 and US-30 in downtown Merrillville, Indiana.

This particular motel was a prime spot for truckers or other long-distance travelers to stop at because it was on the edge of the Chicago metropolitan area. Merrillville was a place where truckers could pull over, stop, get some gas or maybe walk in, get some snacks or coffee, then hop on the freeway before heading into Chicago. May 2nd was supposed to be a normal night at work for Peggy at the Days Inn.

Right before 11 p.m., she arrived at the motel and clocked in for the night. She relieved the clerk working the earlier shift and was ready to get to work. That particular night was a little busier than usual. According to the motel records, the place was about 70% full that night, so this meant that there were a lot more guests than a usual Thursday night.

So as soon as Peggy clocked in for her shift, she was busy. There was no time for activities like drawing or cross-stitching like she normally did. The start of her shift was so busy that the clerk who worked before her actually stayed an extra 15 minutes to help her.

Sometime after midnight, things eventually slowed down around the motel. And around midnight, Peggy spoke with the motel manager over the phone and said that everything was calming down. Between 1.30 a.m. and 1.40 a.m., Peggy checked a guest into the room. Nothing about this interaction between Peggy and the motel guest seemed unusual.

The guest walked in, asked for a room, and Peggy processed the paperwork and handed over the room key. That was it. But sometime after 1.40 a.m., something did happen to Peggy inside that Days Inn. About six hours after Peggy started her shift at around 5 o'clock a.m., she was supposed to call her manager to check in.

Now, it was routine protocol for the night crew member to call the manager in the morning. That's because the motel had been robbed several times over the last few months. So this particular phone call between the person who was closing and the manager basically served as a safety check to let the manager know that everything was okay. But to the manager's surprise, Peggy never called that morning.

Instead of waiting for Peggy to call, the manager decided to do something. She just knew that this was completely out of character for her, and she knew that something was wrong. So she decided to call the police. The police arrived a few minutes later around 6 a.m., and when they got there, they were surprised by two realities. Number one, there was a handful of very angry motel guests standing in the lobby waiting to check out of their rooms. Number two, they were surprised by the fact that Peggy was not in the hotel room.

And number two, no one was working behind the front desk. Besides the motel guests, the entire lobby was empty. The police began looking for Peggy by calling her parents, but neither one of them said that they had heard from her since she left for work the night before. What was also strange was that her keys and her wallet were both sitting on the desk behind the motel's front counter, and her car was still parked in the parking lot.

But there was no sign of her. Initially, the police weren't too concerned about the situation. Now, Peggy was an adult. She was 24 years old. And quite frankly, she was free to come and go as she pleased. So maybe she decided to take off work a little earlier and didn't tell anyone.

But according to Peggy's parents and her boss, Betty Pierce, the motel's manager, that wasn't like her. She would have never just leave work early without telling anyone. And besides that, besides being out of character for her, where would she have gone? Her car was still parked in the parking lot and her wallet and purse were still inside. She couldn't have gotten far if she had left alone.

As soon as Betty Pierce, the manager, heard the police weren't taking this too seriously, she jumped in her car and drove to the Days Inn. And when she arrived, she found several items out of place, like the cash drawer. According to her, the cash drawer wasn't locked like it was supposed to be. And when she counted the money, she thought some of it seemed to be missing. The motel manager told the police about a vacant part of the motel.

She told the officers it was a section of the motel they closed off to guests for the winter months. So at that particular time, this entire section of the motel would be empty. The cops decided to search this empty part of the motel, looking for any sign of Peggy or anything else to suggest where she might have gone. And after only a few minutes of searching, they found her.

At the end of the hallway of this vacant section of the Days Inn, they found 24-year-old Peggy Gill dead. Her body was lying at the farthest part of the hallway near the fire exit. She was completely naked and had her clothes folded in a neat pile next to her. An autopsy later revealed that Peggy had been sexually assaulted and shot twice in the head with a .22 caliber gun.

But besides the two gunshots, there weren't any other injuries to her body. This seemed to suggest she wasn't involved in any type of struggle or fight with her killer. This also meant that she was probably ambushed. The Indiana State Police were called in to help with the investigation. Because Peggy's murder happened in such a small town, the police department there just didn't have the resources or experience to investigate such a crime.

The first theory the Indiana State Police Department devised was that Peggy had been murdered by some rapist or sexual deviant. They theorized her killer arrived at the motel between 1.30 a.m. and 2 a.m. Then they proceeded to rob, rape, and kill Peggy in that exact order. After he shot and killed her, he dragged her body to the vacant section of the motel and dumped her body at the end of the hallway.

He then neatly folded her clothes and placed them beside her body before fleeing. But several factors of this initial theory just seemed wrong. The first strange thing about this scene was, of course, the folded clothes. If some sexual deviant perpetrated this crime, as the state police suggested, this wasn't your typical rapist behavior.

Not many rapists are known for carefully removing their victim's clothes and then neatly folding them beside their body after being killed. In most cases, the clothes are ripped and thrown everywhere. They don't put much thought into how their clothes are going to look afterwards. They don't neatly fold them next to their victim's bodies. So this detail about the crime scene really stood out to investigators and made them question their initial theory.

Again, this doesn't look like a crime committed by a typical rapist. Within a few days, the police ruled out this being a personal attack on Peggy. They didn't think she knew her attacker or had ever met him before. After extensive interviews with all of her family, friends, and co-workers, no one was considered a suspect or even a person of interest in the case.

But it wasn't only these interviews that confirmed their theory that Peggy didn't know her killer. That's because detectives learned about a similar crime at another Days Inn motel, and that's when they realized they're on to something.

On May 2nd, 1989, the same night Peggy was murdered, Jeanne Marie Gilbert, a hardworking single mom, switched shifts with a co-worker at the Days Inn Motel in Remington. She needed to switch shifts to attend her daughter's cheerleading event the next Friday, so she wasn't even scheduled to be working the night of May 2nd, 1989. At 11 o'clock p.m., Jeanne started her overnight shift like usual.

She worked with another front desk clerk for the first hour of the shift, but the other employee left for the night around midnight, leaving Gianne alone in the lobby. The first few hours of her shift seemed completely normal. She spent most of the night in a room next to the motel's front lobby working on homework. At the time, she was taking classes at a local community college working towards a degree.

And like most of her overnight shifts, she used the adjacent room next to the front lobby to work on homework while still keeping an eye on the front desk just in case anyone walked in. At around 4.30 a.m., Gianne made a courtesy wake-up call to one of the motel's guests. And according to the guest, everything about the phone call seemed fine. But sometime after 4.30 a.m., something did happen to Gianne.

Because about an hour and a half later, around 6 a.m., the Jasper County Sheriff's Department started receiving phone calls from angry hotel guests saying that they were trying to check out of their motel room, but no one was at the front desk. Before officers could even make it to the Days Inn Motel, they received another call. This time it was a call about a bus driver who saw a nude female lying on the side of the country road.

It was 34-year-old Jeanne Gilbert, the missing Days Inn motel worker. She had been sexually assaulted and shot to death three times with a .22. Although Peggy and Jeanne were killed only within a few hours of one another, the police had a hard time putting the two cases together. Unfortunately, two different law enforcement agencies were assigned to each case.

The State Department was handling Peggy's case, and the local police department was assigned to Jeanne's. But eventually, both the state police and the local police were able to connect the dots and learn about both murders. They ultimately determined the two cases were in fact connected. In both cases, the gunman assaulted and killed the motel's front desk employee.

They stole money out of the cash drawer, stealing about $426, and they shot and killed their victims with the same .22 caliber. The news sent shockwaves throughout the community because a serial killer was on the loose targeting young female motel workers. For many investigators, it was hard to imagine how someone could commit two brutal assaults and murders on the same night.

Both murders happened 50 miles apart, but besides the location of the victims' bodies, both cases were almost identical. In the weeks and months following Gian and Peggy's murders, the press began referring to the case as the Days Inn Murders, and people throughout Indiana had a hard time sleeping at night knowing that a violent serial murder stalked the night.

Not only could the police not stop the killer, but they also had no idea who he was. Whoever killed Peggy immediately drove out an hour south and killed Jeanne the same night. It became clear that the only law enforcement agency fit to handle this type of situation was the Indiana State Police.

Neither police department from the towns where the murders happened had either the resources or the experience to investigate such a case. So as soon as the Indiana State Police officially took over, they created a special task force in order to hunt down the killer. Over the next several months, investigators conducted dozens of interviews with possible persons of interest.

Many of them included people the police identified as having traveled through both areas around the time of the murders. They also spoke with travelers who only stayed in the area for a night or two. But all of the interviews turned up empty. No one was arrested for either murder. During the investigation, two separate criminal profiles were created. And although they differed, they both agreed on a few things.

Number one, the suspect was likely a white male. Number two, they likely lived far away from both motels, so he knew he could escape. Number three, he was likely close in age to both his victims, somewhere between 24 and 34 years old. And number four, he probably had some type of previous criminal record. But that was pretty much it.

This criminal profile could match hundreds, if not thousands, of young white males living in Indiana. After several months of investigating, the FBI got involved and started working the case alongside the Indiana State Police. But like the state police, the FBI didn't have much evidence. So sadly, both cases turned cold.

Several months later, on January 1st, 1990, there was another incident. This time, a 21-year-old woman showed up to work at a Days Inn in Columbus, Indiana, a place about 140 miles south of Remington, where Leanne was killed 10 months earlier. Around 5 a.m., a man walked into the motel's lobby and approached the female clerk.

He was wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans and was described as looking like your typical blue-collar trucker. The man asked the motel worker if she knew about any good restaurants in town. He said he was hungry. So she gave him a couple ideas, a few restaurants nearby, and then he turned around and walked out. About 15 to 20 minutes later, he came back. This time, he was carrying a cup of coffee.

After entering the lobby for the second time, he approached the front desk and threw the cup of hot coffee right in the clerk's face. While she tried to regain composure, the man jumped over the counter and began prying open the cash drawer. He also told the female clerk to give him all her money. After several minutes, the man yelled at the clerk to get outside.

expecting to be killed, the woman did everything the man demanded. She followed his orders and walked down a frozen stream of water beside the motel. The entire time, she thought the man was going to shoot her, but he never did. Once she got to a trailer home, parked on a hill up the street from the motel, the man turned around and left.

That's when she convinced the homeowner of the trailer to let her inside and call the police. The day after this incident happened, the Columbus police released a composite sketch of the man the 21-year-old motel employee described. At that point, the Columbus police had no idea that two similar incidents had occurred just 10 months earlier, so they didn't know their cases might be related.

And without any leads coming in, the case went cold just like the others. Throughout 1989 and 1990, investigators in Indiana attempted to track down the man now known as either the Days Inn Killer or the I-65 Killer. He had picked up the nickname the I-65 Killer after discovering his crimes were committed along the I-65 stretch between Kentucky and Indiana.

Even after investigators considered the possibility of all four cases, the 21-year-old from Columbus, Jeanne Gilbert, Peggy Gill, and Vicki Heath could be connected, they still had no idea the real identity behind the I-65 killer. All four investigations remained cold for the next two decades.

It wasn't until 2009 that the stories began receiving media attention again. The following year, the case had a major break. In April 2010, a DNA hit in CODIS confirmed that Vicki Heath, the first victim from Kentucky, was a victim of the same person who also killed Peggy Gill and Jeanne Gilbert.

This big break from DNA testing revealed that the I-65 killer started his crime spree two years before they initially thought. But the breaks didn't stop there. Three years later, this is now 2013, there was another DNA hit in CODIS. This time, there was a match to a 1991 rape and assault from Rochester, Minnesota.

The victim fortunately survived, but she endured a brutal attack of sexual assault and several beatings. This major, this massive discovery in 2013 led investigators to wonder how many more possible victims of the I-65 killer could be out there.

Law enforcement officers from Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, and the FBI pondered this question for the next nine years. They wondered if there were more victims out there, but they desperately needed to find this person known as the I-5 killer. Although they had finally been able to link him to several crimes through DNA, they still didn't know his name. But all of that was about to change in 2022.

In early 2022, the Indiana State Police Department decided to do what many law enforcement agencies across the country were doing to solve their old cold cases, forensic genetic genealogy. By 2022, the Indiana State Police had heard about countless cold cases being solved with new DNA testing.

They hoped this technique, forensic genetic genealogy, could help identify the I-65 killer. They had DNA from several crime scenes, they just didn't have anyone to match it to. That's when investigators decided to upload the I-65 killer's DNA to several DNA databases. These databases included Ancestry.com, 23andMe, and GEDmatch.

The first hope was that they would find an exact match. Maybe, just maybe, the killer had voluntarily submitted his DNA to one of these databases. But if not, if they weren't going to get that lucky, then the second hope would be to find a relative, maybe a first or a second cousin, or even better, a sibling, parent, or child.

Forensic genetic genealogy works by combining advanced DNA testing and traditional genealogical research. It's especially useful in cases just like the I-65 killer because it uses unknown DNA collected from a crime scene to try and identify a suspect. Forensic genealogists can often identify the suspect's distant relatives to build a family tree.

Once they have a family tree, they can eliminate the innocent family members until they find the guilty one. In the case of the I-65 killer, the Indiana State Police submitted his DNA for genetic genealogy in early 2022, and by March of 2022, they discovered a match.

On April 5, 2022, the Indiana State Police held a public press conference where they formally announced the true identity of the I-65 killer, Harry Edward Greenwall. According to authorities, genetic genealogy confirmed that the DNA collected at the crime scenes was a 99.9999% match to Greenwall.

After three very long decades, Harry Edward Greenwall was finally identified as the I-65 killer who terrorized women throughout at least three separate states. Very little is known about Harry Edward Greenwall's background or his life, but this is what law enforcement does know. Throughout his life, Greenwall was in and out of jail and had an extensive criminal record.

He had even escaped jail on two separate occasions. In April 1963, he was arrested and convicted of armed robbery. In that particular case, he was sentenced to two years in prison plus five years of probation. Then in February 1965, Greenwald was arrested in Jackson County, Kentucky on a sexual assault charge. Four years later, in 1969, he was paroled.

In 1982, he was once again arrested and sentenced to prison for a burglary in Iowa. This is where he escaped from prison for the first time. After being caught, he was sent back to prison and was able to make another escape. He eventually finished his sentence and was released from prison in Iowa in 1983.

Sometime after he was released in 1983, the authorities believe he got a job working as a railroad worker. Harry Greenwald lived a somewhat normal life despite several run-ins with law enforcement over the years. He was married at least once and fathered several stepchildren. He worked for the railroad company for over 30 years until he retired in February 2010.

For over three decades, no one knew that he was connected to murders at the motels in both Kentucky and in Indiana. Law enforcement agencies spent decades searching for their suspect. And when he was finally identified through forensic genetic genealogy in 2022, there was an immense sense of relief. They finally had the man's name.

But getting justice for his victims was an entirely different story. Harry Edward Greenwall died of cancer in 2013, almost 10 years before he was finally identified in the murders. So for the families of his victims, there might be some level of closure in knowing who is responsible for their murders, but there is no justice.

At the press conference in 2022, the Indiana state authorities acknowledged that there might be more victims out there. He might be linked to more rapes, murders, robberies, and assaults that we don't even know about yet. But now that we have his DNA, law enforcement agencies across the country might be able to use it to solve their cold cases.

there's still a chance that he might be connected to more crimes. Today, DNA testing has confirmed at least three of Greenwald's murder victims, 41-year-old Vicki Heath from Kentucky, 24-year-old Peggy Gill, and 34-year-old Jeanne Gilbert. But based on his lengthy criminal record, there's likely to be many more victims out there.

The I-65 killer's motive is a mystery. Since he's dead, law enforcement won't be able to get the opportunity to sit down and ask him why he committed those violent crimes. But through forensic genetic genealogy, law enforcement finally identified the man responsible for targeting young female motel workers along I-65.

He was able to elude capture for decades until advancements in DNA testing was eventually able to identify him. The truth, long concealed, now sees the light of justice. To share your thoughts on the case, 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.

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