Valentine Sally
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For nearly 40 years, a teenage girl found dead on Valentine's Day along an Arizona highway was known only as Valentine Sally. But now, with advancements in DNA testing and forensic genetic genealogy, she has finally regained her name. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 253, The Story of Valentine Sally. ♪♪

Valentine's Day, 1982, Williams, Arizona, a place known as being the gateway to the Grand Canyon.

A state trooper responded to a call about a tire that had fallen off a truck on Interstate 40, a highway stretching almost 400 miles through California, Arizona, and New Mexico.

The call was simple, find the tire and pull it off the highway. But when the state trooper got to mile marker 152 of the interstate, instead of finding the truck's missing tire, he found a body. It was the partially naked body of a young woman, probably just a teenager. She was lying face down underneath a cedar tree about 25 feet off the interstate.

If the trooper hadn't gotten out of his patrol car and started walking in the grass, no one would have probably ever seen her. She wasn't visible from the highway. The case was labeled as a homicide and turned over to the Coconino County Sheriff's Office. But before they could worry about finding the suspect, they would first have to identify her. The scene had very little clues about who she was. She was practically naked. The only thing she had on was a pair of blue jeans with the designer brand label Seasons.

Next to her body in the grass were the rest of her clothes, a white sweater with thin red or maroon stripes, a size 36C white bra, and a white handkerchief. But noticeably missing were her shoes and socks, which seemed a little odd because this was a pretty cold time of year in this part of Arizona. So what happened to her shoes?

Also strange was that there was some of her belt loops were broken, like someone had used them to drag her body to where it was found. So the authorities wonder, did someone pull over to the side of the interstate, grab her by her blue jeans, drag her to that spot 25 feet away, and just leave her there so that no one would find her?

If that was the case, she was probably killed somewhere else and then had her body dragged to this particular location. So we're talking about at least two potential crime scenes here. But who was this young woman? Well, the girl didn't have any identification on her, so the only thing the police had to work with was what she looked like.

She was reported as a white female somewhere between 5'4 and 5'5 inches tall, weighed about 120 to 125 pounds, blue eyes, blonde or strawberry blonde hair that was about 9 1⁄2 inches long. She had several moles spread across her chest.

Her left ear was pierced, but her right ear was missing, so they didn't know if it was pierced or not. And she had a few scars across her body, one on the top of her left foot and another on the back of her thigh. So after the scene was photographed and the evidence was collected, she was sent to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy. And this is what the forensic pathologist found. She showed signs of a lot of decomposition, so she probably died about two weeks before her body was discovered.

This also meant that she had been exposed to the outside elements for days. Almost her entire face and her right ear had been eaten away by insects and animals. So that was a problem for a few reasons. Number one, her identification was going to be even harder. Besides not having any ID or anything, she was missing most of her face, which made her pretty much unrecognizable. So how is anyone supposed to know who this girl was?

Number two, the medical examiner couldn't figure out exactly how she died. She didn't have any obvious injuries or major signs of trauma, so his best guess was that she was probably suffocated. That's sort of the catch-all diagnosis when no other cause of death is obvious, so suffocation it was. He also couldn't determine a specific manner of death.

Although homicides seem to be the most likely, it wouldn't make much sense for this person to either naturally or intentionally turned up dead alongside the interstate. Someone must have done this to her. Plus, you had all the other evidence. The torn belt loops, like someone had dragged her off the highway, and all of her clothes found around her. All of that screamed foul play.

Not only did the forensic pathologist have a hard time determining a cause or manner of death, but he also couldn't figure out who this girl was. She looked like a teenager, but he couldn't say exactly how old she was. She didn't have an ID or a wallet on her, like I mentioned. Her fingerprints weren't in the system, and there was nothing on her body that identified her. Was she a runaway? Was someone out there looking for her? Did she have any family? No.

No one at the sheriff's office or medical examiner's office knew the answer to any of those questions. However, there was something that stood out from her autopsy, her teeth. At the time, her left lower molar, which is tooth number 19, looked like it had been drilled in preparation for a root canal only about one week before she died.

She also had a dissolved aspirin in the tooth's cavity like she had been in a lot of pain when she died. Again, probably in preparation for the root canal. But she died sometime before she was ever able to make it back to the dentist.

Other than that, though, the authorities had nothing. No cause or manner of death, no ID, no person responsible for her death, nothing. There wasn't even any evidence of a sexual assault. Despite many of her clothes lying on the ground next to her, the authorities didn't think that she had been sexually assaulted. So within days of her discovery, the girl got her nickname, Valentine Sally.

She was discovered on Valentine's Day, and Sally was just a generic name.

Her body was kept at the morgue while the authorities waited for someone to come identify her. They thought it could take a few days, even a few weeks, for someone to finally come looking for her. Maybe a family member, maybe a friend, would turn up at the police station looking for her, or to report her missing in the first place. And she would no longer be just Valentine Sally. She would have an actual name. But what the police weren't expecting was for that to take decades.

Back in the early 1980s, police departments usually had two ways to work these types of John and Jane Doe type cases. One, they could put out a bulletin to other police departments in the area to see if they had a missing person who matched the description. And if they did, they could compare notes and see if they matched.

Or number two, they could put out media releases to the public and maybe someone would come forward looking for their loved one. But in this case, neither one of those tactics seemed to work. No other police department in the area reported anyone matching Valentine Sally's description missing. And none of the pleas to the public worked either. No one came forward saying that this was their loved one.

As part of the investigation, Valentine Sally's information was uploaded to the Doe Network, a nonprofit organization of volunteers who work with law enforcement to connect missing person cases with John and Jane Doe's. And not long after that, the police in Arizona got their first big tip.

A Northern Arizona University student called in saying that he thought he had given Valentine Sally a ride on February 2nd, 1982, 12 days before her body was discovered. He said he saw her hitchhiking and gave her a ride, a place about 100 miles away from where her body was found later on.

While they were in the car together, she said she was living with some friends in the Phoenix area and worked as a dishwasher. Although she didn't come out and say it, the student said that he thought she was probably a runaway between 16 and 17 years old. She also matched Valentine Sally's description. She was a white female with blonde hair wearing a red and blue or white and blue sweater with jeans.

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According to the student, she apparently said she needed to get all the way across the country to New Jersey because there was some type of family emergency. She said she planned to get to the Little America truck stop in Flagstaff and then would get a ride with a trucker to the East Coast to meet up with the family. But the girl never said who she was or what her name was. So although this tip seemed good in the beginning, it didn't give the police anything solid to work with.

And even to this day, we don't know if that was Valentine Sally or not. Yes, it matched her physical description. Yes, it happened within 100 miles of where her body was eventually found. And yes, Valentine Sally could have been a young hitchhiker. But there's no way of knowing for sure.

We're also talking about the early 1980s here. There were young people hitchhikers everywhere. So this university student could have given someone else a ride that day. We just don't know.

After that, investigators went around asking locals in the area if they had seen a young blonde teenager in the last couple of weeks. And initially, this produced a good amount of leads. Several people reported seeing a woman who looked just like her. One of them was a woman named Patty Wilkins.

She told the authorities that a young woman about 15 to 17 years old, matching Valentine Sally's description, entered her family's truck stop at around 3 o'clock in the morning on February 4th. This was the Monte Carlo truck stop, a spot about one mile down the road from where she was found. And February 4th made sense with what the authorities knew about her because that was 10 days before the body popped up.

As a waitress, Patty worked the overnight shift for her family's truck stop. And according to her, this young girl wasn't alone when she walked in. She was with a guy wearing a big hat and was much older than her. At first, this whole thing seemed really strange to Patty. Why was this much younger girl walking into a truck stop with a much older guy in the middle of the night? This is 3 o'clock in the morning.

Well, maybe he was just an older relative, her uncle or something. But Patty decided to say something just to make sure. If this older guy really wasn't just an older relative, she needed to find out.

So she said she went up to the girl when the guy wasn't around and asked her if she was okay. She told her that she could stay at the truck stop with her if she didn't feel safe with this person. But apparently the girl said that she was completely fine. She didn't say who this older guy was or if he was family or not, but she was like, no, don't worry about it. Everything's all right.

So after that, Patty said that the man ordered a full breakfast for himself, but the girl didn't eat anything. And when Patty asked her why she wasn't hungry or why she wasn't ordering any food, the girl apparently said she had a really bad toothache and didn't feel like eating. So at this point, alarm bells are going off in the detectives' minds. They're thinking this might really be Valentine's Sally.

They already knew about the dental work from the autopsy, suggesting that she was just about ready to have a root canal. And now this witness was saying how the girl complained about a toothache and didn't want to eat anything. So this seemed like a really credible sighting.

According to Patty, after the girl said her tooth hurt, she offered to crush up an aspirin tablet and helped her to apply it to the tooth. Again, this lined up perfectly with the autopsy. Valentine Sally had a crushed up aspirin tablet on one of her teeth.

So now the police feel really good about this being the same girl. And as far as a timeline went, they thought she was probably killed just a couple of hours after this sighting at the truck stop. But who was this older guy with a big hat that she was with? Patty described the man to investigators as a white male between 60 and 65 years old.

He was wearing a big floppy cowboy hat with a large peacock feather that stuck out of the front brim. She said he was wearing a brown vest with some type of patchwork design on it. But never once did the man give Patty his name. He was just some older trucker guy.

When it came to how the man and Valentine Sally were interacting with one another, Patty said that the man seemed really concerned about her toothache. And that's why she assumed that he was just an older relative. Nothing about how they were interacting with one another seemed off. The only thing was the age difference and that it was 3 o'clock in the morning.

At the very least, Patty's story helped investigators piece together a possible timeline. This older man and Valentine Sally were seen at the truck stop around 3 a.m. on February 4th. The truck stop was only about one mile away from where her body was discovered, and there was evidence of a ground-up aspirin tablet on one of her teeth.

So investigators felt pretty good about the fact that she was likely killed right after being seen at the truck stop on the 4th. But the story also raised other questions, like why would she be trying to travel across the country to New Jersey if she was planning on having a root canal?

If Valentine Sally was the same girl who hitchhiked with that college student and was last seen at the truck stop on the 4th, it doesn't seem very likely that someone would try hitchhiking thousands of miles if their tooth hurt as bad as this girl's tooth apparently did. And why didn't she mention anything about her plans to Patty? If Patty went up to her and asked her, hey, are you okay? Then why didn't she say she was hitchhiking?

Then finally, what was she doing with this older guy at 3 o'clock in the morning? Was this trucker she planned on having take her across the country to see the family like she might have told the university student if they're the same person? So the police thought they had a pretty good timeline, but they also had a lot more questions that they needed help answering.

A forensic sketch artist was called in to create a sketch of Valentine Sally. The artist used both the photographs taken at the autopsy and Patty's description of her. But it's worth mentioning here that the autopsy photos probably weren't that good. Remember, most of her face had been eaten away by animals.

So the best description the forensic sketch artist had was that of the witness at the truck stop. And besides Valentine Sally, the artist also created a sketch of the man with the cowboy hat.

The hope was that either sketch could be used to help identify them. So they were put up almost everywhere. Other truck stops in the area, gas stations, along telephone poles, anywhere and everywhere that you could think of. But no credible tips about either one of them came in. No one recognized Valentine Sally. And for a while, some people thought that the older guy could be a serial killer named Royal Russell Long.

Long was believed to have traveled through the Interstate 40 area in Arizona after he murdered Cindy Pallett and Charlotte Kinsey in September of 1981. But so far to date, no connection between Long and Valentine Sally has ever been established by investigators. And Long died of a heart attack while in prison in 1993, having never confessed to Valentine Sally's murder.

Fast forward to May 12, 1982. Valentine Sally was buried at a cemetery in Williams, Arizona. No one knew who she was, and the people who attended her funeral were total and complete strangers, plus a couple of the detectives working the case. Most of them were just people who came together because they didn't want this poor young girl to be buried all by herself without anyone else there.

By this point, the police had compared the description of Valentine Sally to over 700 missing person reports with no luck. Of that list of nearly 700 people, 692 of them were ruled out fairly quickly. The other couple of people needed additional information before they could be ruled out as well. One of them was for a girl with connections all the way to Buffalo, New York.

A tipser had called into the police saying that the composite sketch created by the forensic artist looked like a girl he had seen on a missing person flyer at a truck stop in Buffalo, New York. But what would a photo of Valentine Sally be doing all the way in Buffalo, New York?

That's hundreds and hundreds of miles away from where she was found in Arizona. Well, at first, the police thought that maybe that could be her because of what the university student had said earlier. The one who had given someone who looked like Valentine Sally a ride and said to him that she was on her way back to New Jersey because she had that family emergency. So at least New Jersey and New York are both on the same side of the country.

But that girl, that particular girl, was eventually ruled out. It wasn't Valentine Sally. After that, the police kept getting more and more tips. Someone would see a missing person flyer in their area, and investigators in Arizona would get their hopes up thinking that it was their Jane Doe. But one after another, they were crossed off the list.

By July of 1984, another missing girl seemed promising. This time, it was Melody Cutlip, who went missing from Florida in 1980. After she ran away from home, her mother reported her missing to the police, but they were never able to find her. So for a while, people thought that Valentine Sally might be Melody.

To figure out if they were right, a forensic odontologist from Albuquerque, New Mexico, compared the girls' dental records. They already had an impression of Valentine Sally's teeth from her autopsy. And Melody's mom from Florida provided the police with a copy of her daughter's dental records so that they could be compared. And when the results came back, everyone was stunned.

This particular forensic odontologist said that the bite marks from both of the girls were a perfect match. Valentine Sally had to be this missing Melody girl all the way from Florida.

She ran away from home, and that's why she was spotted all the way in Arizona two years later. Not only did the bite marks appear to match, but Valentine Sally's forensic sketch also matched. It looked almost identical to Melody. Like Valentine Sally, Melody was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white girl who was 18 years old at the time that she disappeared. She was also around the same height and weight.

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Just as quickly as the forensic odontologist said that Valentine Sally was in fact Melody, detectives in Arizona hopped on a plane to go tell Melody's mom in Florida. But when they sat down with her, she had her doubts that it was really her missing daughter. In particular, she didn't think that the scars on Valentine Sally's body were in fact her daughter's.

So she told the police, no, that's definitely not my daughter and wouldn't even allow them to ship the body to her. It was just her, I guess, mother's intuition saying, no, that's not my daughter. Plus, how reliable is bite mark analysis? It's something that we've talked about in other episodes of the show before. Some people say that it's very accurate, while others out there might call it junk science.

Now, just because Melody's mom didn't think it was her, everyone else did. A death certificate was issued for Melody, and Valentine Sally's case was officially closed by Arizona investigators.

Patty Wilkins, the waitress from the family truck stop, even helped to raise money for a headstone for Melody, which was engraved with both names, Melody Cutlip and Valentine Sally. That's how confident everyone was with this particular forensic odontologist findings.

But here's the reality. Melody 1000% couldn't have been Valentine Sally. Her mother was right all along. That's because in the summer of 1986, the real Melody mailed her mother a letter saying that she was still alive and she definitely wasn't Valentine Sally from Williams, Arizona. But

But instead, she had run away from home all those years earlier and was now engaged and working as a traveling salesperson. So whoever was buried with that Valentine Sally and Melody headstone was someone else entirely.

Back in Arizona, Valentine Sally's case was reopened. It had to be. They had made the wrong identification because of the forensic odontologist report, but progress in the case continued to be slow. A tip would come in, it would get investigated, and then they would start all over again. There were also several more sketches and facial reconstructions that were done over the years.

The first sketch was done just four days after she was found. That's the one that we've already talked about. But the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children did their own two facial reconstructions made from CT scans years later. Carl Kuppelman, a California-based forensic artist, also made his own reconstruction based on Valentine Sally's CT scans. But no solid identifications came from any of them.

Now fast forward again to 2005, over two decades later. By 2005, the case was assigned to the Cold Case Squad Unit, a special division of the Coconino County Sheriff's Office. The group was mostly made up of volunteers with some type of law enforcement background or experience. Even some of the original detectives who worked Valentine Sally's case back in the day joined the squad.

The group was led by Chuck Jones, Jana White, and Joe Summers. Chuck Jones was a retired FBI agent who really became someone credited for keeping this particular case alive. It's easy for a case like this to be forgotten. It's a Jane Doe.

No family members have come forward saying that they're looking for this individual. They don't even have an identity. So it can be easy for people to, unfortunately and sadly, forget about cases like this, but not this one. And that's primarily due to this group of retired and relentless investigators.

By 2008, the Coconino County Sheriff's Office secured funding to perform DNA testing in dozens of open murder and unidentified person cases in the area, one of them being Valentine Sally's case.

When it came to the county's unsolved homicide cases, they used the money to perform DNA tests to try and identify a suspect. But when it came to John and Jane Doe type cases, the testing was done to try and get an identification. Then, if they had any additional DNA left in the case file, they would then look for a suspect after that.

The plan was to get DNA profiles from the unidentified people, including Valentine Sally, and then send them to a university in Texas to be analyzed. From there, they would work with NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, to find a match.

Now, while this process worked for a few other cases in the county, it didn't work for Valentine Sally. Her DNA still wasn't in the system. And after that, a few more years went by. In 2013, the Cold Case Squad was back at it again. This time, they took a DNA sample from Valentine Sally's autopsy and uploaded it to the Federal Unidentified Human Remains Database.

That way, if any of her relatives had submitted DNA, hers could be identified through a family match. But the results weren't what anyone had hoped for. Once again, no DNA in the system matched hers or matched anyone from her family. So it was once again back to a waiting game.

By 2018, news about the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, a.k.a. the Golden State Killer, had spread like wildfire. The reason why this particular arrest was so big and unlike any other was because, one, this serial killer had evaded police capture for decades and was now finally behind bars. But number two, this was the first big case in which genetic genealogy was used.

Police in Northern California had taken the once-unknown killer's DNA collected from multiple crime scenes and uploaded it to various publicly searchable DNA databases. But instead of getting a direct match, they found relatives of the Golden State Killer, which would eventually lead the authorities to D'Angelo's front door. And then eventually, this case becomes historic.

So the Arizona Cold Case Squad wondered if genetic genealogy could help their Valentine Sally case move forward. Obviously, her case was much different, though. She was an unidentified person and the Golden State killer, well, he was a serial killer.

However, the same genetic testing can be done in both of these types of cases. All the authorities need to do is have usable, testable DNA. So in February 2021, almost four decades after Valentine Sally was found, there was finally big news in the case.

Detectives from Coconino County and the Arizona Department of Public Safety had secured the funding needed to perform genetic genealogy in her case. And here's how they did it. They created another DNA profile from a sample taken from her autopsy. After that, they partnered with world-renowned genealogist Barbara Rae Venter, one of the people who actually helped to identify the Golden State Killer.

Then together, they submitted Valentine Sally's DNA to dozens of public databases. Then not long after that, they got something. From your fryer to the table, it's a quick trip for crispy fries. But how about a Crosstown delivery? McCain's Sure Crisp Fries are designed to go from fryer to container to carrier to passenger seat across town during rush hour down a shortcut that wasn't all that short to a doorstep before they hit the table. And that first bite, the crispiness speaks for itself.

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While searching through these different DNA databases, the authorities found one of Valentine Sally's female cousins. Once they had identified her, they worked backward to create an entire family tree of relatives living in St. Louis, Missouri. And among the people they identified were six young girls around the same age as Valentine Sally, who all shared the same biological parents.

So presumably one of these six sisters had to be her. One by one, they looked at each girl to see if they could be her. And one by one, all of the sisters were ruled out except for one.

They found a girl in the family who completely vanished from records starting around the year 1979. So she either passed away or went completely off the grid. The girl also had a history of running away, and there were juvenile records belonging to that girl that she had never had expunged.

So that's when things clicked for the Cold Case Squad. This girl had to be Valentine Sally, 17-year-old Carolyn Celeste Eaton of Missouri. On February 22, 2021, just a few days after the 39th anniversary of the discovery of her body, the Coconino County Sheriff's Office held a press conference to announce the identity of Valentine Sally, Carolyn Eaton.

Back around Christmas of 1981, Carolyn ran away from her parents' house in the suburbs of St. Louis. Earlier that night, her parents came home to find her with two guys that they didn't know. So they got into an argument and Carolyn stormed out the front door. Now, this wasn't the first time that she had done something like this. So at first, her parents didn't think too much about it. She would just come home in a couple of days like she usually did. But that's not what happened.

This time was different. Carolyn never came back. No one ever saw her or heard from her again until she was finally identified as being Valentine Sally. After Carolyn left her parents' house in Missouri, the authorities believe she hitchhiked her way to Arizona. But what exactly happened to her after that is a mystery. That's because to this day, we still don't know what happened to her or who's responsible for her death.

Now here's everything we know about Carolyn Eaton, which unfortunately isn't too much. She was born on October 1st, 1964 in St. Louis, Missouri. Her dad's name was Donald and her mother's name was Isla.

He was from Missouri and she was raised in Illinois. Her dad was a war veteran who died in 1979 at the age of only 49, and her mom died many years later in 1997. So neither one of them lived long enough to know what happened to her. And neither knew that the entire state of Arizona was working so hard to identify her.

As soon as investigators in Arizona learned about Carolyn, they flew to St. Louis, Missouri to meet with some of her sisters and other relatives. And that's where they officially made the determination that Carolyn really was the girl they had searched for for decades. According to an article by Oxygen, as soon as the police told the sisters that they were there to talk about an old missing person case, they asked if it was Carolyn.

Her family had no idea that after she stormed out of the house that night all those decades ago, that her body was discovered thousands and thousands of miles away just two months later. Uncovering Valentine Sally's true identity is still just the first piece of the puzzle. As of today, the investigation into her murder is still ongoing. We don't know who's responsible or what happened to her.

According to investigators in Arizona, they are still actively investigating the case and every lead that they receive about it. But so far, as I sit here to record this episode, no arrests have ever been made. We're also still searching for so many answers. Like, who was that older man that she was seen with at the truck stop right before her murder? He's never been identified. We also don't know if he had anything to do with her death or not.

so the authorities are still pursuing information about who that truck driver was. There's also questions about her death. Was she really strangled like the medical examiner suspected? How soon after being seen at the truck stop did she die? Why were her clothes spread on the grass next to her if she wasn't sexually assaulted? Maybe someone tried to assault her and she fought back and was killed. Then there are these questions.

What was she doing all the way in Arizona when everyone that she knew was back in Missouri? Was this the same girl that that university student gave a ride and said that she was trying to make her way back to New Jersey? But if that was her, why New Jersey? Again, all of her family was from Missouri. She didn't have any connections to New Jersey. But maybe all of that was a lie.

When Patty Wilkins, the waitress at the truck stop, was told about Valentine Sally's identification, this is what she told reporters. She said she would forever mourn the loss of that pretty young girl that she gave aspirin to nearly 40 years ago. Quote, Well, I'm going to cry. It's like one of my girls, she told CBS 5 News.

It's only been me and her, but now she's got a family. Isn't that great? It doesn't get any better. End quote.

She also told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that she continues to wonder whether she could have done more to help the girl, saying, quote, I could have pulled her off that truck. I could have forced her to stay with me. I could have called 911. I could have done a million different things that I didn't do. The only thing I did was help to put aspirin on her tooth, end quote.

It is an absolute reminder that hope springs eternal for police investigations and someone with a missing family member. St. Louis County missing persons detective Tom Taylor told the Post-Dispatch, and it shows the investigators kept this case alive over all these years. End quote. Without DNA testing and genetic genealogy, Valentine Sally would still be just a Jane Doe.

But thanks to advanced DNA testing and forensics, we can finally give her a name, Carolyn. But this is just the beginning. Now we must work to identify her killer. Can genetic genealogy, the same technology used to identify her, be also used to catch a killer?

Carolyn is still buried at Mountain View Cemetery just outside Williams, Arizona. But today, her headstone reads, Valentine Sally and Carolyn Eaton. It's unclear whether her body will ever be moved back to Missouri to be closer to her family. To share your thoughts on this week's episode, follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales.

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If you'd like to become a producer of this show, head over to our Patreon page or send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.