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If you want to learn more about how you can support Forensic Tales and get access to Patreon-only content, check us out on Patreon at patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. We'll be back next week with a brand new story. Until then, please enjoy the episode. It's 5 o'clock p.m. on a warm and sunny evening in August 2016. The weather in Queens, New York is a perfect 80 degrees.
Many New Yorkers are just getting off work. A perfect time to get outside into the fresh summer air for a nice long jog. That is exactly what 30-year-old Karina Ventrano did. She laced up her running shoes, put some headphones in, and headed outside for a late afternoon jog. Something that she did every single day.
Karina had no idea that this would be her very last jog around Spring Creek Park, New York. But even with a taped video confession, a DNA profile that matched, would that be enough to put a selfish and cowardly killer behind bars? This week on Forensic Tales, we cover the murder of Karina Vetrano. ♪
Thank you.
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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Karina Vetrano was born on July 12, 1986 in New York. Her parents, Philip and Kathy, raised Karina and her siblings in the city of Queens, a New York borough on Long Island across the East River from Manhattan. Karina and her family were what many would consider true New Yorkers.
Karina's father, Philip, was a retired New York City Fire Department firefighter. He was one of the first responders at Ground Zero after the September 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Centers in New York. In school, Karina attended Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens, New York. Archbishop Molloy High School is a renowned private Catholic and co-educational college preparatory school for 9th to 12th graders.
After high school graduation, Karina attended college. She eventually obtained her master's degree in speech pathology from St. John's University, a private Roman Catholic university in the heart of New York City. After graduating with her master's degree, she dreamed of working with people suffering from speech and language disorders. She specifically wanted to work with children diagnosed with autism who struggled to communicate.
Outside of her textbooks, Karina also had a lot of other passions and interests in her life. She loved to write and even had dreams to one day become a famous writer herself. Her love for writing was featured in a 2013 short film titled Paradox, a piece of work her friend had written and produced.
Karina also had a large following on social media. Her Instagram and Facebook pages had thousands of followers. Her followers watched as Karina posted beautiful selfies of herself and posted photos she had taken from different trips around the world. Her presence on social media grew every single day. She was someone that many would now consider a social media influencer.
Besides her Instagram, she also had a blog that she called, quote, a collection of conversations, contradictions, and poetic conflicts. Although it was a public blog that anyone on the internet could access, she used her blog as a platform to share her personal thoughts and feelings with her followers.
In one of her blog posts, Karina wrote about what her funeral might be like someday. A portion of the blog post read, quote, Have you ever found solace in the thought of dying?
Sometimes when I'm feeling really sad and lonely and misunderstood, I wonder if right now at this age and at this time of my life, if by some freak accident I died, what would happen? I think about all the different people from different times of my life that would attend my funeral. End quote.
In 2016, Karina was 30 years old, living and working two jobs in Queens, New York. In her first job, she worked with children diagnosed with autism. And in her second job, she worked as a caterer at Vetro Restaurant and Wine Bar in the city. Although she had moved out of her parents' house, she remained incredibly close with her parents and siblings, who lived a short distance away.
Anytime Karina had time off from her two jobs, she loved spending it with her family. One of the things Karina loved to do was jogging with her dad, Philip. Not only did she love to jog to stay in shape, but it was also an opportunity for her to spend time with her dad, just the two of them. Jogging was something that Karina and her dad, Philip, were known to do together all of the time.
On August 2nd, 2016, Karina asked her dad if he wanted to go jogging together like they did all the time. But on this particular day, Philip told his daughter no. He said his back had been bothering him and he wasn't up for a run. Maybe it was a father's intuition or something else. But Philip told Karina he didn't want her to go jogging that day without him. He never liked it when Karina went running alone.
but Karina assured her dad that everything would be okay. She said, don't worry, daddy, I'll be okay. She turned around, walked out of the house, and started her run. On August 2nd, 2016, Karina started her jog in the late afternoon around Spring Creek Park. Spring Creek Park was a familiar spot that she and her dad would run and was only about one block away from her parents' house.
Although it's a good running spot, it's also desolate. Spring Creek Park has a lot of underdeveloped marshlands, and only a tiny portion of the park is accessible to the public. But for Karina and her dad, Spring Creek Park was a convenient running spot near her house. Some argue that Spring Creek Park could not be described as the best place for a jog.
Besides the marshlands, the park also sees many transient people who like to hang out and sleep in the park. But when Karina left her parents' house and headed out for her run that day, it was still light out. The sun was shining. So even if transients were hanging out in the park, she could see them. And she could stay away. Karina's dad became worried when she didn't return home at the time she said she would.
Her run was taking much longer than usual, so Philip decided to call her cell phone, but she didn't answer, so we called again. Still no answer. When Karina didn't answer her cell phone, Philip knew that something was wrong. He knew that when he called his daughter, she replied, no matter how busy she was or what she was doing. She would always answer his phone call.
But this time, she didn't. Philip is a retired New York City Fire Department firefighter, so he had a lot of connections to the New York police and fire departments. So when Karina didn't answer her cell phone, he decided to call his friend and neighbor, who just so happened to be an NYPD police chief. After that phone call, an official search was launched for Karina.
Philip immediately joined the NYPD search team. They focused their search on Spring Creek Park, where they believed Karina went running. They searched the marshy areas around the park, looking for any sign of her. For the next several hours, the NYPD searched the park up and down, but there was no sign of the 30-year-old anywhere.
Around 11 o'clock p.m. that night, their search ended when Karina was found. But it wasn't the NYPD who found her. It was her very own father, Philip, who made the horrific discovery. Philip found his daughter face down about 15 feet from the closest walking trail. He instinctively picked her up and instantly knew they were too late. His daughter had been murdered.
In an interview with Injustice by Nancy Grace, Philip described the nightmare of finding his own murdered daughter. He said that while searching the park, quote, my primal instincts were telling me something was wrong, end quote. He went on to say, I knew by looking at her that she was dead.
When Karina's body was discovered, she only had on some of her clothes pointing towards a sexual assault. Her body was covered in scratches and bruises, indicating that Karina and her attacker got into a struggle. And before she died, Karina had courageously fought for her life. A New York medical examiner performed Karina's autopsy the following day.
The autopsy confirmed investigators' suspicions that she'd been sexually assaulted. Based on the other injuries to her body, specifically her neck, the medical examiner ruled her cause of death as strangulation. She had been strangled with such force that the medical examiner could make out a full handprint around her neck.
The medical examiner believed that whoever killed Karina had also struck her in the back of the head with some type of blunt object, maybe a rock, because the area where her body was discovered had a lot of stones and rocks. The autopsy also revealed key details about the moments right before she was killed. Investigators already knew that she fought against her attacker because of the bruises and scratches on her body.
But the medical examiner also noticed something about her teeth. When he looked inside her mouth, he saw that one of her teeth was cracked. Karina had bit her attacker so hard that she cracked a tooth. Evidence also suggested Karina tried to get away from her attacker. Underneath her fingernails, the medical examiner found grass like she might have been dragged off the running trail and into the bushes.
But it wasn't just grass they found underneath her fingernails. They also found DNA. The medical examiner recovered a small amount of unknown DNA from underneath Karina's fingernails. They also found DNA on her back and on her cell phone, which was recovered in the grass only a couple hundred feet away from her body.
The discovery of the DNA was huge for the NYPD and Karina's family and friends. If they had the killer's DNA, they might be able to find him. Support for this episode comes from The Foggy Dog. As a dog mom myself to my golden retriever Kona, I'm always looking for pet products that are both beautiful and functional. That's why I'm so glad I found The Foggy Dog.
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After Karina's autopsy finished, the NYPD announced a $10,000 reward for any information that would lead the police closer to her killer. Her family and the entire community were desperate to find the person that could do something to someone as beautiful and sweet as Karina.
At the same time the police offered the reward money, investigators ran the unknown DNA profile found underneath Karina's fingernails through CODIS, our national DNA database. But the DNA sample didn't match any known offender in the system. Throughout the investigation, the NYPD compared over 600 DNA samples, but none came back as a match to Karina's killer.
Investigators also compared the DNA to members of Karina's family, their friends, and hundreds of people who knew Karina, but no one matched. The hunt for Karina's killer was daunting for New York detectives and heartbreaking to her family and friends. The police checked over 1,700 investigative reports throughout the investigation and followed up on over 250 leads.
But each investigative report and tip led the police to yet another dead end. They were still no closer to finding and holding the person responsible accountable. Even with his DNA, they still didn't have a name. New York detectives theorized that they were dealing with a random act of violence committed by a random stranger. If this theory was true, they were dealing with a complex case to solve.
Random acts of violence perpetrated by random offenders are some of the most challenging criminal cases to solve. These types of murders are also rare. Research tells us that we are far more likely to be murdered by someone we know, a family member or spouse, compared to a complete stranger.
Investigators theorized this was a random attack because Karina had no known enemies. They couldn't find a single person in her life who could have wanted to do this. She wasn't involved in the wrong crowd. She was a young 30-year-old woman who decided to go out for a run in a place she was familiar with and never came back. At the time of her murder, she wasn't involved in anything that would have put her at risk.
All signs pointed to a random act of violence committed by someone who was simply at the same place inside the park at the same time as Karina. Five days after Karina was killed, another young woman was murdered in a very similar way. 27-year-old Vanessa Markhart was found murdered in a meadow of weeds in Princeton, Massachusetts.
Like Karina, Vanessa was also out on a jog alone when she was attacked. The similarities between the two murders were impossible for investigators to ignore. Both women were around the same age. Karina was 30 and Vanessa was 27. They both went out for a run alone when they were attacked, and they were both attacked along rural, empty routes where no other people were around.
Based on the similarities, at least at face value, police in New York and Princeton wondered, was it possible these two murders were related? Just as quickly as this theory emerged, it was squashed. DNA found at the crime scene in Massachusetts didn't match the DNA found in New York.
This meant that the murders were committed by two different suspects. It was just a huge, devastatingly unfortunate coincidence that Vanessa and Karina were both killed in similar manners, but by two different perpetrators. This discovery was later confirmed when her killer was identified six months after Vanessa's death on April 15, 2017.
Police in Massachusetts arrested 31-year-old Angelo Ortiz in connection with Vanessa's murder after eyewitness testimony and cell phone data placed him at the scene. Investigators in New York continued to test the DNA sample collected in Karina's case for the next four weeks looking for a match. They also released a sketch to the public on August 31, 2016.
The drawing was of a picture of a man they believed to be a person of interest in the case. The sketch was based on a description provided by a utility worker who witnessed a man coming out of the weeds and running on the path by Belt Parkway. The eyewitness saw this man around the same time the police theorized that Karina was murdered.
The witness provided the NYPD with a description of the man, and the police decided to release the image to the public. They hoped someone might recognize the man and call in a tip. This person might not have been Karina's killer, but if they were in the same location that evening, they might have seen or heard something related to the murder.
But when the sketch was released to the public, the police didn't get the results they hoped for. The sketch didn't generate any leads that led to an arrest. Two weeks after the police released the sketch, the popular true crime show Crime Watch Daily released a home surveillance video that captured Karina out on her run that day.
Hosted by Chris Hansen, the journalist who also hosted To Catch a Predator, True Crime Daily released the video showing Karina jogging around 5 o'clock p.m. that day. In the video, Karina is seen jogging past a white small sedan wearing black shorts and a black sports bra. Her hair was up in a ponytail and it looked like she was holding her cell phone.
The video only captured Karina for a few short seconds, but this was the first piece of evidence that caught a glimpse of Karina that day. As she jogs across the screen, she passes another darker colored vehicle similar to a small SUV. Then after that, Karina's gone. She runs out of frame from the surveillance camera. The police believe that this was the last known footage of her alive.
Several months go by in the investigation with no arrests. Even with the DNA evidence, the sketch of the man seen running from the general area where Karina was attacked and the home surveillance footage of her jogging that day, the police still cannot make an arrest. It would be another several months before there was an update in the case.
On December 4, 2016, four months after the murder, the FBI partnered with the NYPD. The FBI and NYPD jointly developed a criminal profile of who they thought their killer might be. They theorized he or she knew the area. They were likely familiar with that park.
Because of their familiarity with the area, they believed that's why the killer selected that spot in the park. They knew that there wouldn't be any eyewitnesses. Police also believed that the suspect likely stopped visiting the park after the murders. If their suspect was a transient, they likely stopped sleeping in the park. And if the suspect wasn't a transient, they likely stopped visiting.
He may have even moved out of the area because he feared he would be caught if he stayed. By the end of 2016, the GoFundMe page created by the Ventrano family to provide a reward fund to anyone with information on the case reached over $290,000. The Ventrano family was desperate for answers as to who brutally murdered Karina and why.
They also became very outspoken about their desire to find the person responsible. Over the next few months, they made several media appearances pushing for police to utilize familial DNA testing, a process that helped Northern California police officers catch the Golden State Killer.
They wanted this type of testing to be done because traditional DNA testing hadn't worked. The DNA profile found underneath Karina's fingernails didn't match anyone in CODIS.
With familial DNA testing, the police could take the unknown DNA sample and search genealogy websites like 23andMe and GEDmatch to try and find a relative of their killer. If they found a relative, they could narrow down a possible suspect list. They also lobbied lawmakers to pass laws that would make familial DNA testing a standard police practice.
At the time, back in 2016, very few police departments across the country were taking advantage of familial DNA testing.
Several months passed in the investigation without a significant break in the case until February 4, 2017, nearly six months after the murder. On February 4, 2017, the NYPD announced they had taken a suspect into questioning in connection with Karina's murder. They identified the person as 20-year-old Brooklyn resident Chanel Lewis.
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Chanel Lewis was a 20-year-old Brooklyn resident who lived in a low-income housing project with his mom, two sisters, and their children at the time of Karina's murder. The housing project building was located less than three miles from the park where Karina was killed. Lewis was an honor student at a local community college, working towards becoming a social worker once he finished school.
He didn't have a criminal record, but he did have several run-ins with law enforcement over the years. In 2013, he had two prior summons for violating rules in Spring Creek Park, the same park where Karina was killed. He also had a 2013 ticket for urinating in public.
In May 2016, 911 received a phone call about a suspicious man holding a crowbar in the backyard of several people's homes. Later on, the suspicious man holding the crowbar was identified as Chanel Lewis. After the incident, no formal criminal charges were filed.
When the NYPD looked into Lewis's background, they discovered he had a history of what they described as displaying hatred towards women. Reports indicated that Lewis told one of his teacher's aides that he wanted to, quote, stab all the girls in school, end quote.
NYPD detectives learned that his clothes were ripped when Chanel Lewis returned to his mother's house on the day of Karina's murder, and he appeared physically disheveled, like he had been in a fight or altercation. When Lewis's mom asked him why his clothes were ripped, he reportedly said that he'd been mugged by a group of men on the streets.
The next day, August 3rd, Lewis's father took him to the hospital to treat several open cuts on his arms and upper body. Lewis continued to maintain that the injuries came from being mugged the day before.
NYPD detectives secured a search warrant to review the hospital records from that day. The documents revealed that Lewis was in fact treated by emergency room doctors that day after Karina's murder and that besides the injuries to his arms and upper body, he was also treated for a hand injury.
Based on tips and information from the public, NYPD investigators didn't believe these injuries came from being mugged, like Chanel Lewis said. They thought they came from murdering Karina.
After Lewis was arrested on Sunday, February 5th, 2017, he was taken to an interview room to be questioned. During the interview, he voluntarily provided his DNA to be tested against the DNA found underneath Karina's fingernails, back, and on her cell phone.
While the police waited for the results from the crime lab, two NYPD investigators and two assistant district attorneys questioned Lewis for the next four hours. Portions of the interview was videotaped, and a small portion of that videotape is available online.
In a 28-minute public video made on YouTube by the Queen's Daily Eagle, the footage shows investigators advising Lewis of his right to remain silent. When asked if he waived his right, he took a moment and said, okay, yes. The investigators and prosecutors asked Lewis about where he was on the afternoon of August 2nd, 2016.
He quickly admitted that he was inside the park that night. When the police asked if something happened when he was in the park that night, he shook his head up and down. He said yes, something did happen. He told detectives that while walking and listening to music in the park, he saw a woman jogging. The first thing he noticed was that she was alone.
According to Lewis, when the woman sped past him on the trail, he grabbed her around the shoulders and repeatedly hit her until she fell to the ground. This statement was just the beginning of Chanel Lewis's confession to Karina's murder. Lewis provided investigators with a step-by-step narrative of how he killed Karina throughout the confession.
After his confession, Chanel Lewis was formally charged with one count of second-degree murder. While in police custody, New York prosecutors began building their case against him.
Prosecutors believed that on August 2, 2016, Lewis left his mom's apartment after arguing with his family. He walked over to Spring Creek Park, where he encountered Karina, who was out there for a jog. Prosecutors don't know if Lewis had ever seen Karina before the attack happened, and if so, had he premeditated the attack before he did it?
But prosecutors felt that their case against Lewis was strong enough even without knowing the motive. Prosecutors also felt confident with the amount of evidence they had. Not only did they have a taped confession, but they also had forensic evidence. DNA. The samples matched when the lab compared the DNA from the crime scene to Chanel Lewis's DNA.
It was Chanel Lewis's DNA found underneath Karina's fingernails, on her back, and on her cell phone. The trial against Chanel Lewis for murdering Karina began on November 5, 2018. On top of murder charges, New York prosecutors also tacked on sexual assault charges. Lewis faced 25 years to life in state prison, if convicted on all counts.
During the trial, prosecutors presented a lot of evidence to the jury. They started with Philip Vetrano, Karina's father, taking the stand to explain to the jury how he was the one responsible and in charge of creating the initial search party to find his missing daughter.
As heartbreaking as it must have been for him, he described in detail to the jury what it was like to find his daughter in the way that he did. After Philip's testimony, the prosecution played Lewis's confession tape, where he detailed how he did it. Up next for the prosecution was Linda Rosano, a forensic biologist.
Linda Rosano testified to the DNA evidence recovered from the crime scene. According to her, the DNA evidence recovered from the scene had a one in a six trillion chance of belonging to someone other than Chanel Lewis.
With odds like that, she testified that the DNA did belong to Lewis and that his DNA evidence proves that he made physical contact with Karina that day. She also testified to the importance of the location where the DNA was found. Because DNA was found underneath her fingernails and on her back,
This suggested a physical struggle or altercation between Karina and Lewis. After the prosecution rested its case against Lewis, Assistant District Attorney Brad Lowenthal requested that nine counts against Lewis be dismissed, leaving four counts including first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and one for first-degree sexual assault.
Once the judge accepted this offer, it was then time for the defense to present their story to the jury. Lewis's defense team attacked the police for how they obtained their videotaped confession. They argued that the police only videotaped the interview after Lewis said he agreed to waive his right to remain silent.
They said none of the interview before that moment was recorded, so there's no evidence of what happened during the first part of the interview. The defense argued that the police spoke with Lewis for hours before recording the interview. They also believed that during this time, when the interview wasn't being recorded, they were pressuring and coercing Lewis to confess.
Despite the fact he said he had nothing to do with it. According to the defense, it wasn't until the police finally convinced Lewis to waive his right to remain silent that they began recording the interview and that this was hours after they were pressuring him to confess.
Lewis's defense team argued that the entire confession was coerced by NYPD detectives, and because it was forced, after hours of intense questioning, his confession should be thrown out and not be able to be used against him as evidence. According to the law, criminal confessions should be made of one's own free will and of sound mind.
The defense team challenged the prosecution's key piece of forensic evidence, Lewis's DNA. The defense argued that the amount of DNA recovered from the crime scene was minuscule. The amount was so small that it couldn't possibly produce an accurate DNA profile.
The defense also pointed out that the NYPD did a sloppy job securing the crime scene from the beginning. To prove this point, they mentioned how Philip, Karina's father, picked up her body after he found her and embraced her in a hug, therefore contaminating the scene.
The defense wrapped up their argument by driving it home to the jury that the police simply rushed to judgment in the case, that the forensic evidence wasn't strong enough, the scene was contaminated from the get-go, and even though he confessed to the murder, he did it under duress. They argued that the only logical verdict from the jury would have to be a full and complete acquittal in the case.
Once the prosecution and defense rested, it was into the hands of the jury to decide Lewis's fate. The jury deliberated for a day and a half, and to many people's surprise, they were hung. They couldn't determine whether Chanel Lewis was guilty or not. On November 21, 2018, the judge had no choice but to declare a mistrial in the case.
Immediately following the court's announcement of a mistrial, New York prosecutors announced they would retry Lewis for a second time. The second murder trial for Chanel Lewis began in March 2019. Like in the first criminal trial, prosecutors played the entire confession tape to the jury.
This time, they made it clear that they weren't coercing Lewis to make a statement or confess to the murder before they started recording the interview. They said that most of the time before the cameras rolled, Lewis was watching TV and that he voluntarily agreed to sit down and talk with detectives.
For the second time, prosecutors presented forensic evidence about the DNA found on Karina's body. They told the jury how testing proved that the DNA belonged to Chanel Lewis, and there was no plausible explanation for his DNA being found on her body other than murder.
The jury in Lewis's second murder trial didn't have to deliberate very long. In fact, they only deliberated for five hours before coming back with a guilty verdict on two counts of second-degree murder, one count of first-degree murder, and one count of sexual assault.
After his conviction, Chanel Lewis was scheduled to return to court for sentencing on April 17, 2019. But just a few days before the hearing, his defense attorney requested a delay due to possible jury misconduct. If found true, Lewis could get a brand new trial.
After reviewing Lewis's attorney's claims, the judge rejected the motion. In his ruling, he said he couldn't find any credible evidence of jury misconduct. And on July 23, 2019, Lewis's sentencing hearing went forward as scheduled. At the hearing, the court sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Lewis spoke directly to the judge and Karina's family at his sentencing hearing. In his statement, he maintained his innocence and said, quote, I'm sorry for the family's loss, but I didn't do this, end quote.
Karina's father, Philip, also spoke at the sentencing hearing. He said, quote, End quote.
Following Lewis's conviction, his defense team has filed two separate appeals to get a new trial. One of the appeals alleged that an anonymous law enforcement officer mailed them a letter right before closing arguments, but they weren't allowed to present the letter at trial as evidence. The other appeal alleged prosecutorial and jury misconduct during the second trial. Both requests have been denied.
Today, Chanel Lewis maintains his innocence. Despite his conviction, his family remains by his side and continues to fight to get him a new trial. Although Karina Vetrano's family has the justice and peace of mind, knowing that Karina's killer will spend the rest of his life behind bars, this justice will never bring her back.
Karina was a beautiful, smart, and loved woman who was simply taken from this earth far too early. She had so much of her life ahead of her that she will never get to experience because Chanel Lewis took it all away from her. Forensic science and DNA is to thank for putting a killer behind bars for the rest of his life.
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