The Curia family moved from Kenya to the United States in 2001 primarily because Jane's husband had tragically passed away and she was strongly against female genital mutilation, which was occurring in Kenya at the time. She and her late husband were vocal opponents of this practice, and she wanted to protect her daughters from it.
Jeremy, Jane's 8-year-old son, and PK, her 11-year-old nephew, were both severely injured but managed to survive. Jeremy was airlifted to a children's hospital in Atlanta and listed in critical condition, while PK was taken to the hospital by ambulance and was not listed as critical. Both spent weeks in a medically induced coma and eventually made full recoveries.
The police suspected that Jane Curia knew her attacker because there were no signs of forced entry into the home. The back door was unlocked and partially open, and there was evidence that Jane and the attacker had sat at the kitchen table for an unknown period before the attack. This suggested that Jane had let the attacker inside and was not surprised by their presence.
The police found a blood-soaked towel in a ditch about two miles away from the crime scene the day after the murders. DNA was extracted from the towel, but it did not match Jane, her children, Jeremy, PK, or any known suspects. The DNA profile belongs to an unknown individual, and the police believe the towel is likely connected to the murders.
A family friend who sometimes helped Jane around the house suggested that the Mungiki tribe, a violent gang from Kenya, might be involved in the murders. However, the police found no evidence linking the Mungiki to the crime, and the gang was virtually non-existent at the time. This led the police to consider the tip as a potential attempt to mislead the investigation.
The cell phone records showed that a man, who was a family friend and had been calling Jane's cell phone 10 to 12 times a day for a month leading up to the murders, never called her on the day of the murders. This raised suspicions, as he had a close relationship with Jane and no alibi for the time of the murders. The police questioned him multiple times but found no forensic evidence linking him to the crime.
The police considered the possibility of multiple killers because five victims were bludgeoned to death, which would be a significant challenge for one person to accomplish. However, if multiple people were involved, it would be harder for them to keep the crime a secret, and one of them might eventually come forward. Despite this, no evidence has been found to support the multiple killer theory.
Jane Curia had applied for asylum to stay in the United States, but her application was denied shortly before the murders. She was in the process of appealing the decision when she died. It is unclear whether her asylum status had any connection to the murders, but some speculate it could be a factor.
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One morning in August 2007, five members of the same family were attacked inside their Powder Springs, Georgia home, leaving three of them dead and the other two severely injured. Even after years of investigation, the case remains unsolved. Who is responsible for these murders? And how can forensic science bring a killer to justice? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 254, The Curia Family Murders.
The family at the center of this week's case is the Curia family.
The neighborhood where they lived was quiet, Powder Springs, Georgia, a suburban neighborhood northwest of the much busier and crowded city of Atlanta. With a population of only about 17,000 people, Powder Springs, Georgia is generally considered a quiet and safe place to live and raise a family. That's probably one of the many reasons that Jane Curia chose to live there with her family.
In 2001, Jane and her three young children, a boy named Jeremy and two girls, Isabella and Annabelle, moved from Kenya to Boston. They primarily moved to the United States for two reasons. One, Jane's husband had tragically passed away. And number two, at the time, female genital mutilation was happening in a lot of places throughout Kenya, and Jane was strongly against this.
She had two young daughters herself and could never imagine something like this happening to them. Both she and her late husband were very vocal in their opposition to this. So after her husband died, she decided to leave her country behind, pursue a new life, and seek asylum in the United States with her children.
After living in Boston for about a year, Jane and the kids moved to a cul-de-sac in Powder Springs, Georgia, a neighborhood with tan and white houses and manicured lawns. And by 2007, Isabella was 19, Annabelle was 16, and their brother Jeremy was just 8. From everything that I read about this family, they did everything they could to try and make a life for themselves in the U.S.,
Jane started working in a nursing home. Her oldest daughter, Isabella, attended college in Chattanooga to become a pharmacist, while Annabelle was a student at McGeckern High School. And even though she was only 16, Annabelle was already an active member at church.
Eight-year-old Jeremy, the only boy in the family, was described as a happy kid who loved to play basketball with his friends. And even though he was young, just eight years old, he already had dreams of one day returning home to his country in Kenya. When people talked about the Curia family, they threw around words like active, united, happy, and social. Nothing about them could explain what happened in 2007.
On the morning of August 1st, 2007, the phone rang inside the Curia's house. It was Jane's sister-in-law, Pauline, calling because no one had heard from them in a little over 24 hours. Her cousin lived in the house next door and hadn't seen them either, even though Jane's black Toyota Corolla was still parked where it usually was in the driveway. Jane going quiet was really out of character for her, so Pauline was concerned.
And when no one answered the phone, she got even more worried and decided to call her then 21-year-old niece, Diana. She told her she hadn't heard from Jane in a while and thought that they should go over to the house and go check on her. So that's exactly what they did. Diana didn't even have time to brush her teeth that morning. They just got in the car together and went straight to Jane's place, which was only about a 15-minute drive away. When they got there, they were confronted with an absolute nightmare.
At around 9.45 that morning, Pauline knocked on Jane's front door but got no answer. Not only was she concerned because she hadn't heard from Jane, but she was also worried because her son, 11-year-old Peter, who went by PK, was staying over at Jane's house and hadn't come home either. He had just arrived in the United States from Kenya two days earlier and was just staying the night at Jane's.
After they tried the front door with no luck, Pauline and Diana decided to go around the side of the house toward the back door. And when they got closer to the back porch, that's when they saw that the sliding glass door wasn't entirely closed. It was slightly pulled open just a couple of inches. So they decided to open the door a little bit more and pull back the curtains. And that's when they saw it.
The house was completely dark and silent without a single light on except for the light from the television which was playing a cartoon show. But beyond the TV was blood. Blood was everywhere throughout the house. All over the floors, all over the walls, everywhere.
Then came the discovery of the bodies. As soon as they saw them, Pauline and her niece Diana immediately ran out of the house and called 911. And within minutes, cops were at the scene. Helicopters flew up in the sky. Ambulances and fire trucks came racing down the street. It quickly became a media circus for this small and quiet neighborhood.
Inside the home were five bodies. Three were pronounced dead right there at the scene, and two were taken away in critical condition. Among the dead were 46-year-old Jane Curria, her 19-year-old daughter Isabella, and her 16-year-old daughter Annabelle. The two still alive were Jane's son, 8-year-old Jeremy, and his nephew, 11-year-old PK. They had somehow managed to survive the attack and were now fighting for their lives.
Back at the scene, investigators had a lot of work to do if they were going to figure out what exactly happened or find out who would have wanted an entire family dead. No one in the Curia family was known to have any obvious enemies. They hadn't even lived in the U.S. for very long when all of this happened, only about six years.
Jane was described as the kind of mother who would have done anything for her children. She really wanted what was best for them. That was part of the reason that they came to the U.S. in the first place. She made sure they went to school every morning, they got their homework done on time, and the kids themselves were all really good kids. They had a lot of friends, they got good grades, so none of this really made sense.
Inside the house, investigators had even more work to do, starting with the victims themselves. The three that were killed had all been bludgeoned to death with some type of long, skinny, heavy object. Jane was found inside the kitchen, where there was practically blood everywhere. There were smears of it on the walls and the floors. There were cast-off patterns. There were droplets of it.
If the police didn't know who this house belonged to, they might not even know who this victim was. That's how bloody this initial part of the crime scene was. Even more chilling was the blood evidence seemed to tell a story. The authorities believed that Jane likely knew and saw what was about to happen to her. She probably saw it coming and even began to fight for her life at some point.
She could have even injured this person, but was ultimately unsuccessful in winning the fight. Also chilling was just how many times she was struck. To put it frankly, it was utter overkill. She didn't need to be hit that many times to be killed. Probably half the amount of injuries would have done the job.
So it was pretty obvious from the beginning of the investigation that this was a rage killing. Whoever did this to Jane and her family was extremely angry. And the only person who could have been that angry had to be someone personal, someone that the family knew. The second victim was Jane's daughter. Next to the front door, the police found Isabella. Just like her mother, she had been bludgeoned to death.
But the difference between her and her mom was that the blood evidence suggested that she didn't see it coming. She was probably blindsided and didn't even have the chance to try and defend herself. So based on the blood evidence, this is what the police think happened. She likely came up the steps, got hit and attacked by whoever did this, and continued to be attacked until she died at the bottom of the steps by the front door.
Now, the third victim, Jane's other daughter. Down the hallway from Isabella, they found Annabelle. Her scene was also different than the other two because there was much less blood evidence. There were still cast-off patterns on the carpet and walls indicating that a similar type of blunt force trauma happened. But for some reason, there wasn't as much blood around her body.
But just like her sister, the police don't think that she saw it coming and was attacked by surprise without having the chance of defending herself. Both of the sisters just simply walked into this.
Next up, the two boys. Just beyond Annabelle's body was a bedroom, and that's where they found Jane's son Jeremy and her nephew PK, the only two to survive. Because blood covered the sheets, bedding, and the mattress inside of the bedroom, that's where they think they were attacked.
And even though their injuries were similar to the girls, blunt force trauma to the head with some type of weapon, they were somehow able to survive. So how was that possible? How were they the only two to live? Well, one of the theories is, is because both of the boys were attacked while on the bed. And if that's the case, then that meant their heads were lying on the bed, which maybe provided some type of cushion.
But again, that's just one of the many possible theories as to how they were able to make it out. Jeremy was airlifted away from the scene and taken to the children's hospital in nearby Atlanta and listed in critical condition. His cousin PK was taken to the hospital by ambulance, but he wasn't listed as critical. He wasn't as badly attacked as Jeremy was, but still, they were both in pretty bad shape.
Obviously, the authorities wanted to get to the hospital as quickly as they possibly could so that they could sit down and interview the boys. They were the only two to survive, so maybe they knew who did this to them. Maybe they could even provide a description of what the guy looked like. However, neither one of them would be in any type of condition to provide a statement to the police for several weeks.
They spent days in a medically induced coma. And even after that, it would be weeks before they were finally able to sit down and tell them what happened. So all the police could do was wait for that opportunity. But while they were in the hospital, there was another fear. If whoever did this found out that they survived, would they come back and try to finish the job? Would they come to the hospital and try to kill these poor boys?
Whoever the suspect was obviously wouldn't want any type of survivor who could identify them. So from the moment they both arrived in the emergency room, the police had uniformed officers as well as undercover officers standing outside their doors, making sure that nothing happened to either one of them. They also kept track of the visitor log at the hospital, thinking the killer or killers might come to visit them.
So they wanted to know about every single person who came to see them while they were in the hospital recovering. But that sort of seemed to be a dead end. No one really that suspicious ever came to visit them. And no one came back to finish the job. Both of them would eventually make full recoveries.
As soon as word spread about the murders, other family members also started to fear for their lives as well. If this family was targeted for one reason or another, who's to say that they aren't targeting others in the same family? So some of them were on edge, thinking that someone might be after them too. This episode is brought to you by Shopify.
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Once the authorities had gone through the entire crime scene, they created a timeline of how they thought the murders could have happened. And here's what they came up with. Based on a forensic search of cell phone and internet records, the police suspected the murders happened about 30 hours before Diana and her aunt discovered the bodies. Cell phone records showed that Jane's daughter Isabella answered an email just after 12 o'clock midnight on July 31st.
Then at 3.30 in the morning, a phone call to Jane's cell phone went unanswered. So this placed the time of the murders sometime between midnight when Isabella responded to the email and 3 o'clock in the morning when Jane didn't answer her cell phone. Now, once they had this possible timeline, the police went around to Jane's neighbors, asking if any of them had either seen or heard anything suspicious.
But according to the neighbors, it was a completely quiet night. They didn't hear anything and no one saw anything strange going on or anyone strange going in or leaving the Curias home that night. So this gave rise to another theory. Jane or someone in the family let their killers inside.
Inside the home itself, there were zero signs of forced entry. The back door was completely unlocked, and according to Diana, it was partially open when her and her aunt got there. Plus, no doors were broken, no windows shattered. There was nothing indicating any type of forced entry by someone.
So this seemed to suggest that Jane probably knew the killer and even let them inside when they showed up. She might have even been expecting them. And according to investigators, there was even evidence on the kitchen table that Jane sat there with whoever did this for an unknown period of time before the attack even happened.
Now what about the murder weapon? Well, no weapon was ever found inside the house suggesting that whoever did this took it with them. And nothing matching the weapon's description was missing from the home either, which meant the suspect probably brought the murder weapon with them that night. So if that's the case, I think it's safe to say that they went to Jane's house that night with the intention to do this. This was completely premeditated.
The only thing the authorities knew about the murder weapon was that it left injuries about 10 to 12 inches long on all of the victims. And it obviously had to be something very strong, like stainless steel or lead, to inflict those type of deadly injuries. Then there was this clue. Jane had a unique injury underneath her chin, suggesting that the end of the weapon could have been pronged, kind of like a fork.
But again, we don't know exactly what type of weapon was used because it's never been found. So at this point, the police are working with a lot of different theories. Jane probably knew her attacker and tried to fight back to protect her children. They likely even sat at the kitchen table for a brief period before all of this happened, and she probably let him inside.
The attack was most likely over something personal because of how many times they were all hit, and the murders were likely premeditated. But besides all of that, the police had a lot of other theories in the early part of the investigation. Each one of the victims had been completely bludgeoned to death. They were struck by the same weapon dozens upon dozens of times each.
So with that many injuries, the police wondered if the suspect could have also been injured in some type of way. The theory is you can't just inflict this many wounds to this many victims without injuring yourself in the process. And plus, we know how much Jane fought back trying to protect herself and her children.
So if that's true, then what about the suspect's blood being found somewhere at the crime scene? If he or she was injured and started bleeding, then maybe they left some type of blood evidence behind that can be used to help identify them. But there's a problem with that idea. For starters, most of the blood evidence found inside the home belonged to Jane.
So if her killer dropped some of his blood inside the kitchen, then his blood would just be mixed with her blood. And since she produced a lot more blood than he would have, then the police are probably just going to find her blood, not the killer's. His blood would be just like a drop in the ocean. And here's another strange thing about the blood.
The blood from the kitchen didn't drip anywhere else. There were no shoe prints, smears, or anything else leading from the kitchen to where Isabella's body was found in the hallway. They just had Jane's blood in the kitchen and the daughter's blood in the hallway. There was also no blood between where her body was found and her sister's just a couple feet away.
So there was virtually no transfer of blood evidence between each victim. It was like investigators had four different crime scenes all within one bigger scene.
Again, the kitchen just had Jane's blood, and even if there was some of the killer's blood in there, it would just be mixed in with hers, and the blood found in the hallway near all the girls both belonged to them. There was no continuation of blood from one to the next, which is really, really strange.
The same could be said for the outside. The police didn't find any blood leading out of the house in any direction either. No blood was on the sidewalk, grass, driveway, or anywhere else. So how did this person get out of the house without tracking any of the victim's blood with him? And how did he kill each person without tracking blood anywhere inside the house? None of that made any sense.
Besides the blood evidence, the police also looked for any other type of forensic evidence inside the house, including fingerprints. Which as it turned out, they found a lot of prints throughout the house. But here's the problem with that. They either all matched the victims or they couldn't be identified. So even though they found a lot of prints, they were all essentially useless.
Within just a couple of hours of the discovery of the bodies, the police had a little meeting with some of Jane's family and friends. It was basically a meeting to let everyone know what had happened and what the police had. According to the police, about 30 people showed up to this meeting, including a guy who would later on become a potential suspect. And here's why they started looking at him.
During this meeting, a guy walked up to the lead detective on the case and said that he had a tip that they should follow up on. He said, Hey, I don't know if anyone's brought this up yet or not, but you guys need to look at the Mungiki tribe. I think they might have had something to do with what happened to Jane and the kids.
Although this person hasn't been named, he was apparently a family friend who sometimes did things around the house for Jane. As a single mom to three young kids, she sometimes needed help with things around the house, and apparently this guy would come in and do some stuff for her.
And even Jane's daughter, 16-year-old Annabelle, would occasionally go over and babysit his kids. He wasn't a handyman or anything like that. He was just a friend who would do things like mow the lawn.
So at this meeting, this guy went up to the police and said that they should look at this tribe, this Monjiki tribe, which at one point was a very violent, politically motivated gang out of Kenya. At one time, they were responsible for a lot of brutal murders and assaults there. Now, at first, the police wondered if this person could be on to something.
This was the first time that they heard about this very violent gang out of Kenya. They knew that's where Jane and her family were from. They had come to the U.S. seeking asylum. So maybe this could lead them down a path that they needed to go down. But the police also had their suspicions about this guy.
The murders just happened a couple hours ago, and now this guy seems to be pointing the finger at someone else. Like, why was this guy so sure this Kenyan tribe had anything to do with Jane and her family's murders? It almost seemed like he was trying to get the police to go down a rabbit hole. But even though they thought it was strange, the police looked into this as a possible theory.
But after digging and digging, they found absolutely no connection between this violent Kenyan gang and the murders.
In fact, if they did have anything to do with it, it would have been the very first time anyone associated with this group from Kenya left Kenya, traveled to the United States, and committed a crime like this. It had simply never happened before, and it wasn't something that this group was known for. Plus, this particular gang or this politically motivated group was virtually non-existent anymore.
They may once have been known for murders and violent assaults throughout Kenya, but they weren't anymore. So there was just zero evidence suggesting this politically motivated group had anything to do with what happened here. It did, in fact, turn out to be just a rabbit hole.
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Now, who exactly is this guy who came forward with that tip? Well, once again, I don't have a specific name for him. As far as what I could find on the case, his name hasn't been made public. Some online reports say that his name is Patrick, but I'm not really sure if that's his real name or not. So for this episode, we'll just keep him nameless.
But here's what we do know about him. He's originally from Kenya, but now lives in the United States. He's married with children. He goes to work each day in the morning and comes home sometime in the early afternoon. And his wife works somewhere else during the day, and then she goes to a second job elsewhere out of town at night.
Apparently, based on all the reports, his family is friends with Jane's family. They all know each other from the same church. So right now, he's looking like a pretty good suspect. He knows the victim, which fits with their suspicion about Jane knowing her killer and letting him inside that night.
Two, it seems like he might have been trying to throw off investigators by planting that seed about the Kenyan tribe. And now comes his alibi. To be blunt, he didn't have one. When the police first questioned him, he said he was at home when the murders probably happened.
But here's the problem with that. His wife was at work all the way across town, so there was no one else at home that could vouch for his whereabouts. It was just him telling the police that he was at home all day and never went near Jane's house.
So over the next several weeks, the police brought this individual down to the police station to be questioned on four separate occasions. They got his fingerprints, his DNA, they took hair samples, they even photographed his body looking for injuries that maybe suggested he could have been responsible for bludgeoning five people. But so far, none of that came with any useful information.
And the police have no forensic evidence connecting him to the scene of the crime. Yes, he seemed suspicious and weird, but that was virtually it. Well, not so fast. There's more. When the police went to Jane's phone company to get her cell phone records, they weren't just interested in the data from the day of the murders. They also wanted all the data from the weeks and months leading up to maybe see who she was talking to.
And after going through pages and pages of phone records, they saw a phone number that kept popping up. The phone number belonging to that same guy, the family friend slash handyman slash Kenyan tribe tipster. Based on these phone records, we know this guy called Jane's cell phone probably 10 to 12 times every single day in the month leading up to the murders.
We're talking easily over 300 phone calls within just a single month. So what was Jane and this person talking about? Well, when investigators sat down and asked him about the phone calls, his answer was always, I don't know. Why did you call her so many times? I don't know. What did you talk about? I don't know. Were the two of you more than just friends? It was always, I don't know. I don't know.
The man kept telling the police that he and Jane were just friends and there was nothing more to it than that. But who calls someone 10 to 12 times a day for over a month if you're just friends? Plus, this guy is supposed to be married. I wonder what his wife would think about him calling another woman so much if they were just friends.
Jane's family, including Diana, the one who found the bodies, even thought that her relationship with this person was a little strange and seemed like it was more than just a friendship. In an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, Diana talked about an encounter where she saw Jane and this guy together at a liquor store. They were apparently headed to a party together and were going there in the same car.
But according to Diana, there was just something off about their interaction. She just thought they seemed like they were acting like they were more than just friends. It almost seemed romantic. Now here's another interesting piece of digital forensic evidence. On the day that Jane and her family were killed, almost everyone was trying to get in touch with her. Her family and friends had been calling her all day long.
But this person never did call that day. He had called 10 to 12 times a day for the last month, but on the day of the murders, he never once dialed her phone number. The last time he and Jane spoke on the phone together was at 10 o'clock p.m. the night before, and he never tried to call her again after that. Why is that?
According to that same Unsolved Mysteries episode on the case, there were also rumors that this person might have had an inappropriate relationship with Jane's 16-year-old daughter, Annabelle. She was the one who would sometimes babysit his kids. Well, after some of these babysitting favors, he would take her to dinner as a way to thank her for what she did with his kids. But it would just be the two of them out at dinner. His wife didn't go and neither did Jane.
So some people wondered if there might have been some type of inappropriate relationship going on. Why would a grown man take a 16-year-old girl to dinner as a way to thank her for babysitting his children? Most people would probably agree that that's a little weird. So here's how that theory could go. Maybe this guy hit on Annabelle at one of these dinners, or maybe he even did something really inappropriate with her.
Then after that, Annabelle went to her mom, Jane, and told her what happened. And that's when Jane confronted him, leading to the murders. Based on everything that we know about Jane, she would have never let something like that happen to one of her daughters.
If this guy had done something inappropriate or something that he shouldn't have done to Annabelle, Jane would have absolutely confronted him and said something. So the police asked this guy if there was any truth to these rumors, but he completely denied it, just like he had denied everything else. It was around this same time that the police learned about something else.
According to some of Jane's family members, someone approached Jane about one year before the murders requesting to borrow a large sum of money, which she apparently agreed to loan him. The family said this guy asked Jane for the money so that he could send it back to his father in Kenya for some business dealings.
So the motive could also be money. If she let someone borrow this large sum of money and then the person wasn't paying her back like they were supposed to, then it's possible that person might want to kill Jane so they wouldn't have to pay back the money. If she's dead, there's no more debt. Well, the police looked into this claim but found no evidence of any money that Jane had let anyone borrow.
So right away, you can just add that to the list of possible theories. Also around the topic of money, there was some mention that Jane herself was expecting money somewhere around the ballpark of $30,000.
According to Diana, the same, again, family member who found the bodies, Jane called her mom a few weeks before the murders saying that she was expecting some money. And when Diana's mom asked her exactly how much, Jane apparently said $30,000. She didn't go into detail about exactly how she was getting that much money, but she said it was coming from a new business that she was getting into.
So after that, everyone just seemed to leave it at that. But there's a couple of strange things about that. Years after the murders, the family apparently found out that Jane did get into a real estate business with a few of her friends. And they were about to sell a house or they were working on selling a house sometime the same month that she was killed.
But that $30,000 payment never materialized. And when Jane was still alive, she never mentioned getting into real estate or anything like that. She just mentioned the money. So once again, we have no idea whether this was related to the murders or not. Let's now go back to Jeremy and PK, the only ones to survive. When they finally recovered enough from their injuries to sit down with detectives, there wasn't really much that they could remember.
They both spent several weeks in the hospital. They both experienced a very traumatic event that almost took their lives as well. And they had spent all of this time on a lot of different types of medication. So both of their memories from that night weren't very good.
When it came to Jeremy's interview with the police, he really couldn't remember anything. He didn't remember the attack, he had no idea who did it, and he remembers virtually nothing. But when it came to PK's interview, he had a little bit more to say. According to PK, the man who did this was wearing a floral print shirt and spoke the native Kenyan language.
But he had never seen this person before, so he had no idea who he was. It wasn't anyone that he recognized, and it wasn't a family member. So at first, the police thought this was great. PK remembered a few details about who was responsible. But when it came time to get a physical description of this floral shirt-wearing guy, PK couldn't remember anything. He didn't know what the man looked like and couldn't describe any of his facial features.
So all we know is the shirt, the language, and being someone that he didn't recognize. That's it. Unfortunately, none of this is too surprising. Jeremy and PK both suffered a lot in so many different ways. So it's not uncommon for them not to remember these types of details. So I think the police hoped that they would remember more than they did, but it just didn't pan out that way.
And everything about this situation is really, really sad. Not only do these two boys have to live with what happened to them and their family, but they also have to live with some level of guilt of not being able to remember anything.
Of course, it's not their fault and they shouldn't feel guilty, but I'm sure they must feel some level of guilt deep down for not being able to remember anything very useful. Now, we've talked about some of the forensic evidence so far, but what else do the police have? And does any of the forensic evidence stand a chance at helping to solve this?
Well, the answer to that question isn't as straightforward as I would probably like. But apparently, the police do have something. The day after the murders, they found a blood-soaked towel in a ditch about two miles away from the crime scene. And as soon as they found it, they collected it, bagged it up, and sent it to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the GBI's crime lab. But here's the good news and here's the bad news.
The GBI was able to get DNA from it, but the bad news is the DNA profile doesn't match anyone that they know. It doesn't match Jane or any of her children. It doesn't match Jeremy or PK. It belongs to someone else. There's also the question of whether this blood-soaked towel even has anything to do with the murders or not.
However, according to the detectives working this case, it probably does. It would be too much of a coincidence for it not to. The towel wasn't there the day before. It only popped up the day after. It's soaked in someone's blood, and it's found less than two miles away from the crime scene. But if the DNA on it doesn't match anyone they know, how will that solve anything?
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The answer to that might just be genetic genealogy. For anyone who's new to the show, genetic genealogy is the process of taking unknown DNA from a crime scene and uploading it to various DNA databases. So let's say you've uploaded your DNA to 23andMe to find out about your ancestry. Well, more than likely, your DNA is now searchable in one of these databases.
So if someone in your family commits a crime, your DNA profile might be compared to DNA collected at a crime scene. It's the same type of technology the police in Northern California used to catch the Golden State Killer several years back. Now in this case, if investigators can take the unknown DNA profile from the towel and upload it to as many publicly searchable DNA databases as possible, they might get somewhere.
They might not find an exact match, but that's okay. Even if they can find just one relative who shares DNA with that person, they can go from there and build a family tree and hopefully eventually find the person that they're searching for. That's exactly how genetic genealogy works.
If anyone in the family has uploaded their DNA before, then there's a chance. This would also finally confirm whether the towel has anything to do with the murders or not. Because there's a real chance that it might. And if it does, the blood on the towel probably belongs to our suspect. Because remember, the DNA profile we know by testing isn't a match to Jane or any of the other victims.
It also doesn't match the possible suspect that we talked about earlier, the family friend who kept calling Jane hundreds of times before the murders. The police have already compared his DNA to the blood, and it's not a match, so it has to belong to someone else. Now, of course, there's still a chance that it doesn't have anything to do with the case at all. And if that's true, this might all be in vain.
But I think it's still worth a shot to try genetic genealogy here. This is a perfect case for that type of DNA testing to be done. We have unknown DNA. We have a profile from it. We just don't know who it belongs to. So genetic genealogy can help us figure that out. But as of today, as the time that I sit here to record this, that type of advanced DNA testing hasn't been done yet.
So we'll have to wait and see if the GBI or some other law enforcement agency will step in and do it. I know it's a risk, and I know it takes nowadays quite a bit of money to perform this type of genetic genealogy testing, and it is a gamble, again, because we don't even know if this piece of evidence is connected to the crime or not. So it would be a complete shot in the dark, but I think it's a shot worth taking.
Besides genetic genealogy, forensic evidence still might help solve this. One, they could find a match to some of the unidentified fingerprints found inside of Jane's house. Now, I don't know how many the police have and what type of condition these fingerprints are in, but if they could identify a match to some of the prints, we've still got a shot. And two, some other type of forensic evidence could pop up.
Maybe some of the items from Jane's house are still in the police's custody and they can eventually find something on it. A hair, a drop of blood, anything that might belong to a suspect. But again, I don't know what the police still have when it comes to the evidence or what's still testable. Now, beyond forensic evidence, there's also a chance someone with information will finally come forward.
Maybe it's going to be the suspect himself, or maybe it's going to be someone else. I don't know. But obviously someone out there knows something, and there's still time for that person to finally come forward and speak their truth. As it stands today, the murders and attacks on Jane and her family remain unsolved. There have been zero arrests in the case, and the police have only identified a few suspects over the last 17 years.
And for the suspects that have been identified, there's been zero forensic proof linking them to any crime. Since the murders, Jeremy and his cousin PK have tried to move on with their lives. They both returned to be with family in Kenya and to finish school.
But just like everyone else, they're left wondering who murdered their family members and why. Besides spending weeks in the hospital recovering physically from their injuries, they've likely spent years trying to recover both mentally and emotionally.
In the years since, the police have made countless pleas to the public for any information about the murders. Even the Kenyan ambassador to the U.S. got involved, asking Kenyans with any information that may help solve the murders to step forward and give it to the police. But so far, there's been no significant progress in the investigation in years. Anyone with information has chosen not to come forward.
Now there's one last piece of information I haven't talked about yet. According to several news articles about the case, Jane had applied for asylum so that she and her family could stay in the U.S., but apparently that application was denied shortly before the murders. And at the time, she was in the process of appealing that decision when she died.
So I'm not sure what to make of that. Was it just a coincidence? Or did her residence in the United States have something to do with what happened? Some other people wonder if Jane's opposition to some of the social issues that were happening in Kenya could have had something to do with it. But there's been no evidence of that either. And the family had already lived in the U.S. for close to six years before this happened.
So if it did have something to do with her beliefs or her opposition to certain things, why did it take so long for this to happen? It seems like if this had something to do with her beliefs and her opposition to some of the social issues happening in her home country, then these murders would have happened a long time ago.
Others speculate about whether more than one person was involved. Five victims is a lot for one person to take on virtually at the same time. So many people wonder if we're looking for not just one killer, but killers. However, if that's the case, that would be a lot harder for two people to keep a secret. It seems like if multiple people were involved, one of them would eventually come forward.
But then again, maybe not. Maybe everyone has sworn to keep this a secret. So that's where the case stands today. The murders are currently unsolved, and everyone who knew the family is left wondering who could have done this and why. The police didn't find any credible forensic evidence at the crime scene, and even the murder weapon is still missing. The only thing they seem to have is that blood-soaked towel found two miles away from the crime scene.
And even that, we're not sure it has anything to do with it or not, or who that unknown DNA profile belongs to. If genetic genealogy can be done on it, what could that reveal? Could it help to provide some of the many answers to these unanswered questions? Can any type of advanced forensic testing tell us who murdered the Curia family back in 2007?
Anyone with information about the Curia family murders is asked to contact the Cobb County District Attorney's Office Cold Case Tip Line at 770-528-3932. You can also send an email to the Cold Case Department at cobbcounty.org.
Those who wish to remain anonymous can submit a tip at 678-567-2490 or call the toll-free number at 888-322-8884.
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