Michelle Wyatt
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Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.

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Before we talk about Michelle Wyatt's story, I wanted to take a moment to wish all of you a very happy holiday season and new year. I'm incredibly grateful for all of you that listen and support the show. And I hope this holiday season and new year brings you and your families all the love in the world.

On October 9, 1980, a young woman named Rita returned home to her Kerrigan Court condo in Santee, California, a suburban city in San Diego, California, about 25 miles outside the larger city of San Diego. Throughout the 1980s, violent crime rates were extremely high in Santee, California.

It wasn't uncommon for any condo community in San Diego County to see its fair share of rapes, assaults, and even murders. On this particular day in October 1980, Rita returned to her condo after spending the night at her boyfriend's place. She shared the condo at Kerrigan Court with her roommate, 20-year-old Michelle Wyatt. They had been living together for a while and met after needing a roommate.

Although Rita was a few years older than Michelle Wyatt, the two instantly became close friends. Rita considered Michelle to be like a younger sister to her. When Rita arrived at the condo that morning, she was surprised to see that the curtains were closed but the lights were still on. She assumed her roommate Michelle was awake. However, when Rita stopped at the mailbox to collect the mail before going inside, she noticed the front door was left unlocked.

This was definitely not like Michelle. She was always careful about locking up. Rita opened the front door and immediately saw Michelle lying on the floor of the living room. She was partially naked with her pink bathrobe opened, exposing much of her body. Michelle had a blank look and stared straight up at the ceiling with her eyes open. Rita quickly dropped the mail she was holding and ran across the street to one of her neighbors. She pounded on the neighbor's door, crying out for help.

The neighbor followed Rita back to her and Michelle's condo, and when the neighbor went inside, she confirmed Rita's worst fear. Her friend and roommate, 20-year-old Michelle Wyatt, was dead. After discovering Michelle's body, San Diego police officers and paramedics arrived at the condo. Paramedics checked to see if there was anything they could do to save Michelle, but they were too late. She had been dead for at least several hours.

So once Michelle Wyatt was pronounced dead, Santee homicide detectives were called. The murder investigation was underway. Rita immediately called Michelle's mom, Louise Wyatt, and told her something had happened to Michelle and that she needed to get to the condo as soon as possible. When Michelle's mother, Louise, arrived at Carrington Court, the entire complex was surrounded by black and white police cars.

She knew something terrible must have happened to her daughter the moment she arrived. When Louise got closer to Michelle and Rita's unit, she flagged down one of the police officers standing outside. She asked the police officer if something had happened to Michelle. The officer said yes. She then asked if she was dead. The officer said yes. Michelle Wyatt was murdered.

Michelle's mother waited outside her daughter's condo for four hours while the police began their investigation. The police called Michelle's father, Raymond Wyatt, and told him he needed to leave work and get to the condo immediately. He knew from the second he spoke with the police that his oldest child and only daughter was dead. In October 1980, Michelle Wyatt was a 20-year-old college student with her entire life ahead of her.

She was born in 1960 to parents Raymond and Louise Wyatt. Her father Raymond worked with the Navy, so the family moved around a lot. The family eventually settled into San Carlos. Michelle grew up with her younger brother Ray J, who was 10 years younger than her. Despite their age difference, the two were incredibly close. Michelle always looked after Ray J and loved being a big sister.

Michelle was described as a type who might have made other girls jealous. She had beautiful blonde hair and an infectious smile. She was intelligent, friendly, and had many friends. Everyone gravitated to her because of her bubbly and vibrant personality. At the time of her murder, Michelle was a college student at Mesa College in San Diego. She was studying communications and oceanography, but was also considering art school.

From when she was a kid, Michelle was always on the go. She enjoyed everything from running to scuba diving. She was also a fierce reader who had a new book in her hand almost weekly. Michelle worked as a food clerk and cashier at a Safeway grocery store in Mission Village. While working at Safeway, she met her boyfriend, Pat. From the moment Michelle and Pat met, they instantly hit it off. Michelle caught his attention with her beautiful blonde hair and big smile.

And Michelle was captivated by Pat's charm. Shortly after meeting, the two started dating. And by October 1980, Pat and Michelle were serious. Michelle had even mentioned to her mother that she thought Pat could be the one. But Michelle Wyatt's life came to a crashing halt on October 9th, 1980, inside her Santee, California condo.

When Santee homicide detectives entered Michelle's condo at 10586 Carrington Court, they began taking photos of the condo and Michelle's body. They also canvassed the place looking for DNA, blood, fingerprints, and any evidence left behind by her killer. As they photographed the condo, investigators thought the place seemed oddly clean.

They didn't find any signs of a break-in. The lock on the front door was in perfect condition, and none of the windows in the condo were broken. They didn't find anything to suggest someone had broken into Michelle and Rita's condo. Besides a bar cart that had been pushed away from the side of the wall, everything looked normal. Michelle was discovered lying on the living room floor, face up. Her eyes were open, and she had a blank stare on her face.

Her pink bathrobe was thrown open, exposing much of her naked body, and she had a towel tied around her neck that had been taken from an open drawer inside the kitchen. Whoever killed Michelle ripped the towel to be able to fit it around her neck. A cord was discovered wrapped around the towel and Michelle's neck. Detectives quickly discovered the cord around Michelle's neck was a phone cord taken from inside Rita and Michelle's condo.

The phone cord was tied around a three-inch wooden block discovered on the floor, almost like a Jenga puzzle piece. It appeared like the wooden block had been used like a garrotte around Michelle's neck. Besides Michelle's body, the homicide detectives noticed the contents of her purse were dumped out on the floor like someone had rummaged through it, but nothing from the bag appeared to be missing.

Inside the first floor bathroom, the police found Michelle's purse. It was discovered stuffed down the toilet like someone tried flushing it. Besides the purse and the toilet, nothing appeared out of place inside the bathroom. There were two hair dryers on the counter, and it looked like a bathroom two female roommates shared. The investigators dusted the bathroom for fingerprints and found a thumbprint on the medicine cabinet.

Once investigators finished examining Michelle's body in the living room, she was taken to the medical examiner's office. Her autopsy was performed the next day. The autopsy confirmed that the victim was 20-year-old Michelle Wyatt, and it also shed light on what happened to her. The medical examiner determined that Michelle was a victim of foul play and died from asphyxiation from ligature strangulation.

She was strangled with the phone cord and towel placed around her neck. Besides evidence of strangulation, the medical examiner also found significant blunt force trauma injuries to the left side of her face. She also had severe bruising below her left eye. These injuries suggested Michelle may have been struck over the head with a blunt object before she was strangled.

The autopsy also confirmed the investigator's suspicions that Michelle had been sexually assaulted. When her body was discovered, she was naked with her bathrobe thrown to the side. The medical examiner took swabs from her body, and when the swabs were tested, semen was found. Evidence suggested she was sexually assaulted both pre- and post-mortem.

Based on the body's rigor mortis, her time of death was estimated to be between 1 and 2 a.m. on October 9th, several hours before her roommate discovered the body. At the time of Michelle's murder in 1980, police departments didn't have advanced DNA or forensic testing. In murder investigations like this, they needed to rely on good old-fashioned police work.

They needed to canvas the area and identify potential witnesses who either heard or saw anything around the condo. While looking for witnesses, the police learned that two of Michelle's neighbors heard something around the time that they believed she was killed. The neighbors said they heard female screams and dogs barking around Michelle's condo between 12 and 1 a.m.

Michelle had two dogs, so the dogs the neighbors heard might have been Michelle's dogs. But according to the neighbors, they didn't call the police. The screams and barking dogs didn't raise enough alarm bells for them to think that anything was wrong. So instead of calling for help, the neighbors went back to bed. Sometimes people just don't want to get involved. Even if someone hears or witnesses a possible crime, they don't want to get involved.

Sometimes it's because they don't want to be questioned by the police. Other times, they simply brush it off and are worried that if they call the police and it turns out to be nothing, they'll get in trouble. In this case, the reason Michelle's neighbors didn't call the police isn't clear. If they had called, Michelle might still be alive.

While canvassing Michelle's neighborhood, they identified a promising witness. His name was Teddy, and he was one of Michelle's neighbors who lived directly across the street. Teddy told the police that on the night of the murder, he saw Michelle playing a game of pool with her boyfriend inside the garage. He said he noticed Michelle's garage door was closed when he went to bed that night, and her boyfriend's car was still parked outside.

But when he woke up the following day to get ready for work, he said the boyfriend's car was gone. Other than that, Teddy, the neighbor, couldn't provide the police with much additional information. Investigators spoke with Michelle's family, friends and roommate Rita. They needed to find out as much as possible about who Michelle Wyatt was and find out if there was anyone who wanted her dead.

But after speaking with her family and friends, they all felt the same. Everyone said how much they loved Michelle and how sweet she was. No one could think of anyone who would want it to harm her. Michelle simply didn't have enemies. When the detectives spoke with Rita, they learned about an incident that happened a few weeks earlier.

When Rita sat down for an interview, she said that a couple weeks earlier, a man approached and attacked her as she walked up to the condo's front door. She was able to fight the man off and call the police. But when the police arrived at the condo complex, the man was long gone, and the police were never able to find out who this man was. The incident troubled Rita so much that she told Michelle that she was considering moving out.

The police looked into this incident to see if it had anything to do with Michelle's murder, but it turned out to be a weird coincidence. The attack on Rita didn't seem to have anything to do with Michelle's murder. Within a few days after Michelle's murder, the police were able to create a timeline of her last known activities. Wednesday, October 8th was a regular day for Michelle. She attended two out of the three classes she had scheduled that day at Mesa College.

She decided to ditch her third and final class of the day so that she could go for a run with her boyfriend, Pat. After the jog, Michelle went to her usual tap dance lessons. She'd been taking these tap dance lessons three times a week since she was seven. After the dance class, she met back up with her boyfriend, Pat, at the condo in Carrington Court. They played three games of pool inside the garage, and Michelle won all three games.

Then around 9 o'clock p.m., Michelle and Pat went back inside the condo where they watched TV for a few hours. Although Pat couldn't remember if he locked the back door from the garage leading into the condo, the police said it was still locked when they arrived. According to Pat, he left Michelle's condo at around 12.45 a.m. He said he couldn't stay the night that night because he had to get up early for work the next day.

He said when he left, he locked the front door using a key that Michelle had recently given to him. That was the last time Pat or anyone else saw Michelle alive. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day.

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That's betterhelp.com. Research tells us that we are far more likely to be murdered by someone we know compared to a random stranger. The types of crimes that happen to Michelle are generally perpetrated by someone close to the victim, a friend, boyfriend, or husband. It's quite rare for someone to be assaulted and murdered inside their home by a random stranger.

So naturally, the first person the police wanted to speak to was Michelle's boyfriend, Pat. Not only was he the victim's boyfriend, but he was also the last one to see Michelle alive. As the boyfriend, he automatically became murder suspect number one.

But when the police sat down and spoke with Pat, he said he had no reason to kill Michelle. He said he loved her and had no idea what happened to her after he left the condo around 12.45 a.m. He provided the police with samples of his blood and hair to compare them to any evidence found inside the condo related to the murder. He even took a polygraph test, which he passed. Michelle's parents and friends didn't think Pat could be involved.

By all accounts, the two had a great and loving relationship. Everyone said Pat loved Michelle and he could have never done this horrendous murder. Pat told the police his only regret was not staying at Michelle's place that night. He said he only left that night because he had to get up early for work the next day. If Pat had stayed the night that night, Michelle might still be alive.

Although the police still thought Pat might have been involved, they had no solid evidence against him, and they were forced to consider other possible suspects. The police found a second promising suspect. The police learned about a male co-worker who worked with Michelle at Safeway. This male co-worker allegedly had been stalking Michelle and showed up at her condo several times unannounced.

He was insistent on trying to date Michelle despite her not being interested in already having a boyfriend. At one point, this male coworker told other people that he and Michelle were dating. Michelle told a few of her friends, including Pat, that this coworker freaked her out and she was bothered by him. As soon as Santee investigators discovered this, they questioned the coworker.

Like Michelle's boyfriend, the male co-worker also denied having anything to do with the murder. He admitted to having a crush on her, but said that he would have never done anything to harm her. When the police asked him where he was on the night of the murder, October 8th and October 9th, he offered a shaky alibi. At first, he said he was at home with his father, but then his story seemed to change.

When he was asked again where he was, he said he wasn't home. Instead, he was on a date with another girl. Although investigators found his alibi weak, they didn't have enough evidence against him, and he was free to go. For the first two months, the police worked tirelessly on Michelle's case. They focused much of their attention on the weird male coworker and the boyfriend, Pat, so they really didn't find any other suspects.

And when the tips and leads dried up, so did the investigation, and the case went cold. By December, two months after Michelle's murder, many of the detectives assigned to the case were reassigned to other cases. Unfortunately, Michelle's murder wasn't the only one in the area. So when a new case came in, detectives were taken off Michelle's case to focus on the new one.

By December, the murder investigation into Michelle Wyatt's death was cold. Michelle's family was frustrated when they learned that the case had turned cold. They felt like the police weren't doing enough to solve their daughter's case. Not only was it devastating for the Wyatts to lose their only daughter, but they also had to deal with the reality of not knowing who killed her.

So as soon as Michelle's case went cold, the family took matters into their own hands. They started their own investigation. They began by enlisting hundreds of volunteers to help distribute flyers about Michelle's case. They put up thousands of flyers in the area where they knew Michelle went in hopes someone could see it and call in a promising tip. They also put up flyers at Mesa College where she was taking classes and the Safeway grocery store where she worked.

To generate additional tips, the Wyatts offered an $8,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest. They even went as far as enlisting the help of psychics to help with the investigation. But the case was still cold despite their best interest in finding out what happened to Michelle. And no one was closer to finding her killer.

Years went by, and Michelle's aging parents were forced to continue grieving Michelle while at the same time not knowing who killed her. They always hoped that he would be caught, but they didn't know when. Michelle's mom, Louise, went to the grave site every week to bring fresh flowers to put on her daughter's grave. There wasn't a break in the case until 16 years later.

By 1996, there had been some significant advancements in DNA and forensic testing. At the time of Michelle's murder in 1980, police departments were extremely limited with the kinds of forensic evidence they could test. Fortunately, in Michelle's case, the first detectives on the case knew they didn't have the capabilities to conduct advanced DNA testing then.

but they collected the evidence anyway, hoping the technology and testing would eventually catch up. And they were right. By 1996, many advances had been made, particularly in DNA testing. So in October 1996, veteran homicide detective Ed Stevens and his partner, Tim Carroll, reopened Michelle's case. They hoped advancements in DNA testing could be done.

First, detectives Ed Stevens and Tim Carroll submitted evidence in the case for new DNA testing. They submitted the swabs taken from Michelle's sexual assault kit to a lab to be tested in October 1996. The results came back a few months later in March 1997, and the results revealed that there was an unknown male DNA profile identified from the sexual assault kit.

Michelle's killer had left behind semen evidence on her body. The next step was to take the unknown DNA profile and run it through CODIS, our national DNA database. But when Detective Stevens and Carroll submitted the DNA profile to CODIS, they didn't get a hit. No one in the database matched the DNA collected from Michelle's body. Initially, this seemed like a major blow to the case.

But the DNA sample was still helpful to investigators. They could take the DNA sample and compare it to many suspects the police interviewed over the years. Ultimately, they ruled out over 90 people who provided DNA samples. But once all the potential suspects were ruled out, the case went cold again. It would be another four years until Michelle's case was reopened.

In June 2000, additional DNA testing was done on the case. This was at a time when DNA testing was rapidly evolving. And only four short years later, police departments had access to even better forensic testing. In June 2000, the samples collected from Michelle's sexual assault kit were retested using more sensitive and advanced methods. Not only did the testing reveal a complete male DNA profile,

But the test also revealed two male DNA profiles on Michelle's body. One of the profiles belonged to Michelle's boyfriend, Pat. But the second profile came from an unidentified male. This new testing in 2000 allowed investigators to finally rule out Pat as a suspect. Pat's DNA was found on the internal vaginal swabs taken from Michelle's body.

This indicated earlier sexual intercourse. The second DNA profile was discovered on the exterior vaginal swads, indicating post-mortem sexual activity. The internal DNA was matched to Pat, which made sense to investigators. The other DNA belonged to the unknown male who the police believed sexually assaulted and killed Michelle. This DNA testing also officially ruled out Michelle's creepy coworker.

He was completely eliminated by DNA testing in October 2000. Despite two earlier breakthroughs in DNA testing, the investigation was once again stalled. The only thing the police had was the unknown DNA profile collected from Michelle's sexual assault kit, but they had no one to match it to. So the sample was only good for ruling out potential suspects they had previously considered.

For the next two decades, the mystery surrounding Michelle Wyatt's murder continued. Her case file sat on a shelf in the cold case division until a fresh set of eyes could look at it. But that took years. Detective Brian Patterson from the Santee Police Department started looking at Michelle's case again in 2019. It had been 39 years and the department was desperate to try anything they could to finally solve it.

Michelle's murder was one of the area's longest and oldest cold cases. In March 2020, the California Department of Justice approved a familial DNA search on the case. This allowed Detective Brian Patterson and his department to compare the DNA profile from Michelle's case to the offenders in the California State DNA database. Not only did they look for an exact match, but they also looked for the killer's relatives.

But the search turned up nothing. They didn't find any matches in the state database. Neither Michelle's killer nor anyone in his family had been arrested in California for a violent crime that required them to provide a DNA sample. After the familial search turned up nothing, Detective Patterson and his department decided to make one last attempt at solving Michelle's murder, this time with genetic genealogy.

Genetic genealogy is the combination of genetic analysis with traditional genealogical research. This revolutionary type of DNA testing is especially useful when the police have unknown DNA but no one to match it to or compare it against. Following the arrest and capture of the Golden State Killer using genetic genealogy, police departments around the country are starting to carry out their own genetic genealogy work.

In Michelle's case, the Santee Police Department wondered if the same testing could be done in their case. In September 2020, the unknown male DNA collected from Michelle's sexual assault kit was sent to a commercial lab, Family Tree DNA. Detectives then uploaded the results to GEDmatch, a DNA comparison and analysis website.

When they got the results, they found around 1,000 relatives of the suspect. With these relatives, they got to work building out family trees centered around four or five closest matches to the suspect. The DNA testing and creation of family trees led them to a female relative who shared over 1,000 centimorgans with the suspect.

centimorgans are units used to measure the genetic distance between one person to another in this case the investigators found a female relative who shared over 1 000 centimorgans with michelle's killer this meant she was likely a first cousin once santee investigators identified this female relative they contacted her for help

They told her what they were doing, and they thought that she might be related to Michelle's killer. Although they ran a risk of tipping her relative off if she knew anything, they were still willing to take the risk. Detectives asked her to upload her DNA to Ancestry, one of the biggest DNA databases. They needed her to voluntarily provide her DNA to Ancestry because Ancestry isn't accessible to law enforcement searches.

So after she uploaded her DNA, she needed to turn the results over to the police so they could analyze them. This search led investigators to her father and his two male siblings. All three of them were potential matches in suspects in Michelle's murder. But further testing also identified one of her uncles, a guy with the nickname Rusty.

Rusty was either Michelle's killer or a close match. Once the police identified Rusty, they started digging into who he was. They discovered that he didn't have any documented children and he passed away years earlier in Missouri in 1996. Could he be Michelle's killer?

Investigators needed to dig even deeper into Rusty's life to find out if he was the guy they had been searching for for almost four decades. Through their investigation, they learned that he had been married a few times, but he didn't have any children with any of his wives. They also knew that Rusty had several affairs with other married women, and at least two led to the women becoming pregnant with Rusty's biological children.

Rusty worked as a carpenter on Hollywood movie film sets at one point during his life, and it was on one of these Hollywood movie sets he met an extra named Betty Ruth White. Betty White and Rusty met while working on the movie set for the 1961 film How the West Was Won, a film that eventually won three Academy Awards.

Although Betty was married to another man when she met Rusty, the two ended up having an affair. And during their relationship, Betty found out she was pregnant with Rusty's baby. But when she told Rusty, he wanted nothing to do with the baby. So shortly after finding out she was pregnant, Rusty and Betty broke up, and Betty gave birth to a son she named John Patrick Hogan in 1961.

The baby was given the last name Hogan because her husband was James Franklin Hogan. James Hogan raised the baby as if it were his own. At this point, the investigators knew that Rusty or his biological son, John Patrick Hogan, could be Michelle's killer. But the police came across another possible suspect.

It turned out John Patrick Hogan wasn't Rusty's only illegitimate son. Besides John, Rusty also had another son who was raised as the child of another man. This second son was raised in Texas and was a retired police officer. This discovery meant that there were three possible suspects in Michelle's murder, Rusty and his two sons.

And the only way to find out who the killer was, was to get DNA samples from all of them. But getting a DNA sample from Rusty's son, John Patrick Hogan, would be impossible. John Hogan died years earlier. Fortunately for investigators, John Hogan had three half-sisters and a biological daughter. Santee detectives reached out to Hogan's half-sisters and daughter and explained the situation.

After speaking with the investigators, John Hogan's three half-sisters and biological daughter agreed to provide DNA samples. And when the samples were tested, the police got the match they had spent decades searching for. John Patrick Hogan's DNA matched that of Michelle Wyatt's killer.

Once they had the results, they compared them to the blood card on file from John Hogan's autopsy, and they also matched. The DNA on Hogan's blood card matched the DNA collected from Michelle's sexual assault kit. The police finally knew who killed Michelle in October 1980. Although John Patrick Hogan was finally identified as Michelle Wyatt's killer, getting justice is a different story.

John Hogan was born in Arizona in 1961, just one year before Michelle was born. His mom, Betty White, was cheating on her husband, James Hogan, with Rusty when she became pregnant. Although Rusty was his biological father, he was raised by his mom's husband, James Hogan. Betty and James' marriage didn't last long, and they divorced when John was young.

His mom never seemed to settle down throughout his childhood, and they eventually became estranged. Years later, she was arrested and charged with shooting an ex-husband in the face. John Patrick Hogan seemed to inherit his temper from his mother. Throughout his life, John Hogan had connections to Arizona, California, Idaho, and New Mexico. He was married twice and served in the Air Force.

He was never the best or the smartest student in school, and his grades were barely passable. He had several minor run-ins with law enforcement when he became an adult. He had been arrested several times on property and drug charges, but he was never arrested for any violent crimes. When he murdered and sexually assaulted Michelle, he was only 18, two years younger than his victim.

But it wasn't only forensic evidence that linked John Patrick Hogan to Michelle's murder. The police uncovered more. Once the police identified John Hogan, they discovered that he had lived in the same condo complex as Michelle years earlier. So he was familiar with the area. Investigators also learned that Hogan was close friends with one of Michelle's neighbors, Teddy.

Teddy was one of Michelle's neighbors the police interviewed early in the investigation. He was the one who told the police that he saw Michelle and her boyfriend playing pool in the garage that night. He also said he saw her boyfriend's car parked outside the condo when he went to bed, but the car was gone when he got up for work the following day.

Well, the police discovered that John Hogan, Michelle's killer, and her neighbor, Teddy, were close friends. John Hogan was known to visit and stay over at Teddy's condo, a unit directly across the street from Michelle and Rita's condo. Since Michelle's killer is dead, there are so many unanswered questions.

We might not ever know why he targeted Michelle that October night in 1980, but the police have a theory. It's possible John Patrick Hogan and Michelle Wyatt knew each other. Hogan had lived in the complex before and he was friends with one of her neighbors. So it's possible the two met a few times when Hogan visited and stayed at his friend Teddy's house.

On the night of Michelle's murder, Hogan might have been sitting outside Michelle's condo. As soon as he saw her boyfriend leave around 12.45 a.m., he went up to Michelle's front door. When he knocked on it, Michelle might have looked through the peephole and seen that it was him. Because they had met before and he was friends with her neighbor, she might have opened the door for him.

Then Hogan struck her over the head, causing blunt force injuries to the left side of her face. Once he gained entry into the condo, he sexually assaulted her and strangled her with a ripped towel he found in the kitchen. She might have put up a fight and he struggled to contain her. He then grabbed the three-inch wooded game piece from the floor and created the garrotte to tighten the towel around her neck.

Once Michelle died, he sexually assaulted her post-mortem and left his semen. If Michelle saw John Hogan threw her peephole that night and opened the door, that could explain why the police didn't find any signs of a break-in. Tragically, Michelle Wyatt invited her killer inside. John Hogan managed to evade capture for decades. He was careful not to leave much evidence behind.

but he made one major mistake by leaving his DNA behind through seminal fluid recovered from Michelle's body. Investigators used this DNA evidence to finally identify him 41 years later through genetic genealogy. Hogan might have been lucky to die a seemingly innocent man, but he's finally been caught.

Although he's not alive to serve time for what he did to Michelle Wyatt, we finally know who was responsible for her murder. Today, law enforcement is considering the possibility that Hogan might be linked to other violent assaults or murders. Although as of today, there is no connection between John Hogan and any other violent crimes.

A killer like John Patrick Hogan might think they have gotten away with the perfect murder, but every crime leaves behind evidence. Sometimes the evidence is discovered right away. Other times, like in Michelle Wyatt's case, the discovery of evidence takes decades. Every crime scene leaves evidence. To share your thoughts on the murder of Michelle Wyatt, 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 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.

Thank you.

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Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.