You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand, KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. On any given day in southern California, hundreds of investigators are working more than ten thousand unsolved cases. That's thousands of friends and families who have lost loved ones, thousands of people who got away with a crime, and thousands of murderers who still walk the streets. Killers who may be your neighbor, go to your church, or could be dating a
close friend. For the next two hours will highlight cases that have gone cold, baffled investigators, or just needs that one witness to speak up. This is used with Steve Gregory Redondo Beach Police Department cold case number zero one six one six six, the murder of Katherine Parker Johnson. This is our first case with the Redondo Beach PD. Recently, the department had a press conference to announce the identity of a Jane Doe dating back to twenty oh one.
It was a fascinating case where today's technology helped advance a case from the past. I reached out to Lieutenant Jeff Mendentz, who put me in touch with Detective John Skipper. Skipper not only was on the scene back in one, but he started the department's cold case unit in O six, shortly after his retirement, and this became one of his first priorities. Detective Skipper invited us to meet him at the Redondo Beach Police Station's Investigations Division where he reviews the
case of the dry Bones in DNA So. August twenty ninth, two thousand and one, there were construction workers. They were doing this major remodel of a residence on sixteen twenty four Wallacott Street in Redondo Beach, and some plumbers were putting down a main line and they came across a bag, plastic bag, and inside this plastic bag, they opened it and they discovered a partial
human skeleton, did not have a skull significantly. There was also the remnants of some other really even to this date unknown material in that bag, some type of synthetic or artificial material that the body may have been wrapped up in. However, the plumbers at the time thought it was not human remain and they tossed the bag aside. Subsequent to that, city Redando Beach building inspector came out and came across this bag and noticed that he felt they were human
remains. He called the police department and the police responded. We initiated an investigation. We believed they were human remains. Contacted the LA Coroner's office and the FBI forensics team did a significant excavation of the entire backyard and at the end of that we were left with a partial human skeleton. The skull and other random bones were missing. We initiated rather intensive investigation. For a while, there was little or no clues. We were trying to obtain the identity
of residents, previous residents of the location. The house had been a rental. It was placed there in nineteen fifty four, moved from Wilmington to the one ten freeway was being constructed. This house was purchased and moved intact from Wilmington to Dando Beach nineteen fifty four. Had a series of owners, almost all of whom rented it and did not have records. The owners had either passed away or they had no record of the renters, so it made it
difficult. We did that investigation. Just a few weeks later, the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York nine to eleven happened, and law enforcement everywhere was trying to determine what their role was going to be in this terrorism and people were being pulled I happened to be the lieutenant in charge of investigations at the time, and I got detailed to to do a project on what the role of law enforcement and terrorism would be. So I got pulled
away, some of the other investigators were pulled away. That coupled with the fact that the DNA technology that we have today was not in place. In there was DNA because we were able to extract from the bone enough DNA to put a to enter it into the code as system for future identification, but the ability to use DNA in the manner in which it is used today did not exist. So all of those things after about a month, stonewall the
investigation and it went cold. So that's kind of an overview of what happened.
Yeah, I didn't even think about the fact that you're talking about nine to eleven in how that that put an end too, put an into a lot of things for law enforcement and investigation wise, because our country changed absolutely and I can't I didn't even think about, you know, pending cases and cold cases I didn't even think about what that would have done to those it did, you know, Because sadly, when you're a police department, a
smaller agency like Redondo Beach at the time, you know you've got tim detectives maybe that are working assaults, devs burglaries, robberies, etc. We back then we conducted our own homicide investigations. This was a cold case. The clues were minimal, the leads were minimal, and it was just one of those things that we've got pulled over into doing other things that impacted our manpower even more. So, all of that came together and it just this investigation
just stalled and nothing happened on it for many years. So detective, how, how how that kind of impact you when you know that, you know, you've got these cases that are sitting onto the sign, and you're like, you know what, just the reality is, we can't focus on those anymore. We have life changing, life altering events happening in front of us.
Was that was that on your mind as well? Or did you have to compartmentalize and say, I really have to let this go for now, or was that really weighing on you that you have pending cases well, certainly pending cases. You know, it's just one of those decisions that management makes.
I was part of management at the time. The chief police ultimately made the decision that, you know, we weigh everything out, what is the likelihood of solving this case with the technology that ultimately led to the identification of
the victim. Well, it's happened, you know, just this year, you know, over twenty years later, so that technology evolved, but it hadn't evolved at that point in time, so it was unlikely that we would have been able to identify the victim at all at that period of time. And just a decision was made, a business decision was made that current cases are going to take that priority. Figured out what we're going to do about
terrorism as a local law enforcement agency is going to take a priority. And this case, that where we've got some partial bones and the pre eminent method of identification at the time, you know, dental records and things like that was an impossibility because the entire skull was missing. It was just a decision
that unfortunately was made. You know, before we go to break, I do want to ask because you did say bones were missing from the skull and that at one point, there were like construction folks or plumbers or contractors that you said that they didn't even think it looked like human remains. So what condition were those remains in? Well, they were they were dry bones basically.
But I think, you know, it was a matter of not having the training and ability to recognize individual dry bones that weren't assembled in the form of a skeleton. You know, there was just a bunch of a bag of bones, and the ID I think in the construction worker's head might have been you know, once the chances there's human bones bared here, it's probably a dog or something got it. When we come back, we'll talk more
with Detective John Skipper. He's with the Redondo Beach Police Department's cold case Unit. You're listening to KFI AM sixty on demand, kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory. This is Unsolved Welcome back. We're inside the Redowdo Beach Police Department's Investigative Division and we're talking with Detective John Skipper about a cold case from more than two decades ago. We'll explain a little bit more in detail. Detective Before the break. We were
talking about the discovery of these bones. You described him as dry bones, so you were actually the one of the responding detectives to this, right. I was the lieutenant in charge of the Investigations division at the time, so I went out to the scene a couple of times just to observe it, to be able to report back to my bosses, etc. Did you see the bag of bones? Yes, I saw the bag of bones that well, initially, I let me think about that. I did ultimately see the
bag of bones. I can't remember if it was the first day or what period of time, but yes, I did see the bag of bones well. And the reason I asked is that as an investigator, when you see a bag of dry bones like that, I mean, if it was a plastic bag, or was it kind of a it was a plastic bag, what do you make of that? I mean, what was your first instinct
when you see a bag of dry bones like that? Well, and knowing that they were mostly human or probably human, right, knowing that they were they were mostly human, My personal opinion was I just started running through my mind the procedures of the investigation, what we could do one step at a time, at that time, it was the excavation of the yard, trying
to determine it there was any other items evidential are items there? There were other bones there, you know, a murder weapon we didn't know at the time, and then trying to talk with my sergeants and determine, you know, short term goals for the investigation. The first things that we were going to do. We had people out interviewing, canvassing the entire neighborhood, interviewing people. We had people trying to get a property history of the people that
lived there. So I really kind of was in the role of a manager trying to determine what course of this was going to take. I think what I'm really curious about, though, is as an investigator, if you're not finding the bag of bones, let me rephrase, if you're not finding the skeleton sort of in a shallow grave, and that it even has the appearance of it being intact, even over the years it would separate. But but the fact that someone took the time to put bones in a bag, did
that tell you anything? No, I don't think it told me anything conclusive. I think there are, like many parts of investigations, a lot of times, there are a number of conceivable explanations for why something has taken place. So it seemed logical to me for either bones or a body. And
you know, frankly, we didn't know that at the time. It was this just bones that was put in there, or was it put in as a body and then did it decompose into the bones or did it decompose at another location and then they picked up the bones and put the bones in here.
So there were a number of explanations, and you know, as an investigator, you want to consider those explanations, then determine what's reasonable and not, and then try to pursue those reasonable explanations to determine which one is the actual factual explanation. It's so funny because you're so calm about it. If I were, if I saw a bag of bones like that, it kind of freaked me out a little bit because it's like someone took the time to put bones in a bag. I mean, are we talking a small bag,
a large trash bag was it? Or the standard type of a kitchen bag. Yeah, So now whether to your point where you have to think of all of the possibilities that you know, maybe someone thought it was a pet or a dog or something like that, and they just put all the bones in a bag. But it just seems to me very odd, in very maccab that someone took the time to put well, as we know human bones now, but put them in a bag and just isolate them like that
just seems odd to me. But you you're so pragmatic about it. But I'm sitting there in my head going, this is weird. This is so weird. Well, you know, let me let me put it this way. In my time in law enforcement, I have learned that people do a lot of weird things, and a lot of you can't explain, you know, if you as an individual, I think a mistake that you can make as an investigator is take your worldview and then make decisions based upon Nobody would
do that only because you wouldn't do it. But there's a lot of people out there that would do things that you wouldn't do. So I think have to consider everything. Okay, so now I'll get past the bones thing. We'll move past the bones. But but it's an important part here because it really helps you to move this case along. And you also said there was other material in the bag. Along with it. Did that yield anything for
you? You said something might have been synthetic. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna say at this point in time, I would like to leave it with there was other material in that bag. I will tell you that we have not identified that other material, and we are trying to do so, got it, But I don't want to get more specific with that right now. Well, and then was there any clothing? No, no clothing, okay?
And then the skull the part of the skull, and you said that bones missing, So were there actual bones that would make up the body proper missing? And then there were parts of the skull missing or there was just no skull all together. The entire skull was missing. And then there were other bones from various body parts you know, that were that were missing. And I don't have a list of those in front of me, but I know that there were there were small bones that were missing. But it's safe
to say that the entire skeleton was not present. So what happens next? You've seen nine to eleven comes puts everything on on pause. You've determined that this you don't have the resources to really dig into this case any further. So you literally have to put it on the back burner. When does the case come back up on your radar? Well, and I did want to
make that clear, is that what everything you just said is accurate. But had we had what we felt would be more workable information, you know, records of all of the renters and things of that nature, we would have still pursued this if we felt it was a workable case. So part of the whole thing was the solvability factors of this case didn't rise to the level that we thought anything that we could do we felt was not going to get
us to solve this case. That has got to be one of the most frustrating things from an investigator, and that's also very frustrating thing for families, for the families of victims too that are victimized by crime like this, because they all think that their case is the most important case, and then there are reasons that you have to make these hard decisions. So I'm glad you
brought that up. When we come back, we'll talk more with Detective John Skipper from the Redunda Beach Police Department, But first this is unsolved with Steve Gregory on kf I AM six forty. You're listening to kf I AM six forty on demand, kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is Unsolved Welcome Back. We're inside the Redownda Beach Police Department's Investigations Division. We're talking with Detective John Skipper. He's with
the cold case unit. In fact, one of the things I do want to mention is that you started the cold case unit. I did, and when did you start that? I retired in two thousand and six in December, and you know I got the chiefs so ka the chief at that time, Chief Leonardi, He gave the okay to start this. So when I retired after a career as a regular here, I transitioned immediately to a Level one reserve police officer, so that still has basically the same powers as a
full time police officer. And I started in two thousand and seven and I did a lot of just housekeeping stuff, organizational stuff for that first year. And then my partner, who was Rick Peterson, he was a sergeant here. He retired in two thousand and seven at the end of the year.
So we began in earnest in two thousand and eight working these cases, and we have since within the last two years, added on two additional persons to the unit, a crime analyst and another officer who was never a regular officer but as a fifty year reserve officer and he does a lot of stuff for us too. So do you have the budget for this? I mean does the department of a budget for this? This is a totally unbudgeted unit. We work for free, all of the volunteers, and there have been times
when we have needed to travel. There have been times when we have needed to pay for DNA like this. The particular case, the DNA extraction and in process to help identify this person was five thousand dollars and there was no budget for that. We went to the Dando Beach Police Foundation and they donated five thousand dollars to us. Rotary is donated thousands of dollars to us for travel. So we're totally unbudgeted. I'll be Dawn, I think that's really
cool. That is genuinely a community oriented policing. I think so. I think that's fantastic. Okay, Detective back to the case at hand. Well, let's bring everyone back up to speed. We're talking about the discovery of some bones in a bag in two thousand and one at a home that was in a part of a construction site reconstruction site. A home had been delivered, it was being worked on and excavated and whatnot, and in the process,
some workers found this bag of bones. You're the lieutenant in charge of the investigations division at the time. You're involved. You say, now you've taken it to the lab. But then nine to eleven happens. There's not much you can do. And before the break you were explaining that you really have to make these hard decisions. You have to really sit down and go what is solvable, what is not solvable, What do we have the resources for, what do we have the technology to handle? And you have to
make those hard decisions, those hard choices. And you made that choice. It's like, listen, we can't take this case any further. And you were hamstrung by little did you know at the time, hamstrung by DNA. But apparently you still kept the evidence and kept the bones or did you keep everything? Yes, we kept everything that we had that is correct. So next step what happens? When did you put ice back on this case.
So in twenty nineteen, so we just wrapped up another homicide in twenty eighteen, we got a conviction on that and in early twenty nineteen we took kind of a break at the end of the year, came back and we picked this case up. We picked this case up because certainly we were aware of it, but genetic genealogy a technology, had been in the news. It probably came about a few years before that, but I had been hearing about it. My partner had been hearing about it, and we thought it might
be able to help us with this case. So we thought we would bring it back. We contacted the coroner's office. They had a section of femur bone that they got to us, and we started the investigation. And where did you go next? Well, I went to the California Department of Justice and they were just learning about genetic genealogy. Now they knew about genetic genealogy of the general public knew about it, but I'm talking about in a more
academic and professional way. They were they were just exploring that type of an investigation. And a person with the Department of Justice Missing Person Unit said, look, we'd be glad to help you to the extent that we can. But there is a nonprofit group with some genealogists. They're called the DNA Doe
Project. And they said, you know, right at this moment in history, and I think this has changed since then, but right at that moment in history, they felt that these nonprofit groups, DNA Doe Project in particular, help us more than could the Department of Justice. So I called the
DNA Doe Project. I lived down in Orange County and just coincidentally, a co founder of the DNA Doe Project lived about a mile and a half from me, so I was able to meet them in person to run the case by them, and they said, yeah, I think this is something we can help you do. And then that started. Just you know, what was about a four year process, a very interesting process of determining the identity of this person. Interesting, how well it was just there's a number of
things that come to mind when I talk about how interesting it was. So let's start with the bones. So we began this investigation with a slice of femur bones. So if you can envision a femur bone, you know, I don't know, eighteen twenty inches. Ever, how long they are. They just took a slice out of this that was about the some point between the sides of a quarter and a half dollar and a little bit thicker, and that's what they sent us. So I contacted the DNA DOE project.
They referred me to a gentleman and volunteer in Texas and this was the first stage of this with extracting new DNA from that bone. I mentioned before that at the crime scene site in two thousand and one, we were aware that there was such a thing as a DNA and DNA investigations and a much lower level than it is now. But they the corner's office, was able to extract DNA at that time to create a profile to put in the CODIS system.
So that was already there. And in fact, in this investigation we had also had a couple We had a missing female body with homicide the Torrence Police Department had done and they never found the body, and we compared our DNA to that. We'd done that a couple of times unsuccessfully. It wasn't a match, but there was DNA in the system. In order to create
a genetic genealogy profile, it required additional DNA and a different process. So okay, we're gonna have to take a break there, so hold that thought. We come back with Detective John Skipper. I mean, I've been fascinated with this, but I got to take a break. When we come back, more on this fascinating case. But first, this is Unsolved with Steve Gregory kf I AM sixty. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand kf I AM six forty heard everywhere live on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve
Gregory and this is Unsolved. If you're listening on the app, you can send us a tip about a case, a story idea, or a comminent about the show. Just tap the red microphone on the app and record your message. Welcome back. We're inside an interview room of the Investigations Division of the Redondo Beach Police Department. It's our first case with Rodondo BEACHPD. We're talking with Detective John Skipper about a fascinating case where DNA played a major role
in the identification. But we still need to find According to the detective, we need to find how she died and who did it. So we're going to talk a little bit more about that. But first before the break, John, I felt so guilty because you were on this fascinating narrative about this DNA doe project and that you had taken a slice of a femur from this
bag of bones that was provided by the La County Medical Examiner. You sent it to somebody in Texas as part of the DNA doe project and they said step one, because you call it very interesting, steps along the way, they had to extract new DNA out of this disc of bone. And that's
kind of where you left off. Yes, that's exactly correct. So it went like this, the DNA doe project would they had several laboratories that were, you know, utilizing this developing technology that they would go to and I don't remember the name of them, but they would send it to a laboratory. I would get a call in about a month and the gentleman in Texas would say, well, they didn't get a sample, they couldn't get enough of a sample, or couldn't get a quality sample. However, there's a
new technology that's come about and we can try that at this lab. So we did that, and we did that at least two times. Months would go by and he would call me and say the exact same thing. There's a new technology. So ultimately they sent it to a lab that was able to extract DNA and sequence it. And I'm not a scientist, but I know they were able to sequence it in the proper manner to allow for some
type of a preliminary identification. Now it was miles away from telling us who the person was, but it was able to tell us for the first time that we knew it was a female from the anthropologist, but we did not
know a race. And so we had been looking at missing persons of all races because there was at the same time that this DNA investigation was going on, my partner and I were doing more of a traditional investigation, trying to locate former residents, trying to look at all missing persons in the South Bay area, those types of things. So after two years of this repeated,
well we didn't get it this time, but there's something new. They finally got a profile and they create a profile, and so we started in January of twenty nineteen. In late in December, just before Christmas of twenty twenty, I got a call and they said, we've got a profile that we'll be able to upload into the jet match public database, and we know it's an African American female. And that was the first big break that we had because right away we could set aside, you know, the dozens of missing
persons reports that we had and focus on African American females. Isn't amazing, I mean, and we need to think about how quickly the technology is evolving even in real time. We're like, well, but there's being held off a couple months at a time because there's yet another new technology. But then ultimately from a small disc of femur bone, they were able to determine this was an African American woman. Correct. That seems fascinating, Correct, And
so now what Well, so a process then is initiated. So I went from talking to the scientists that with the volunteer scientists that was helping with the DNA to the volunteer genealogist, a woman named Missy Koski and her partner of a guy named Carl Koppelman, and he coincidentally lives in Torrance. The other lady lives out in Texas. These people are volunteers, are all over the country. Again, we were fortunate and we got a guy that lived in
Torrance, so we could meet with him person to person. So the process, really simplified version of it is like this. They take that genetic sample and they enter it into the DNA profile is entered into a public genealogy database called jet match, and that's public, so they can get into that and they see if they can come up with based on that profile in that system, any relatives of this person. And I mean I say relatives. You know, we're out third fourth cousin, and they did. They found a
woman in Pennsylvania that had a genetic connection to our Jane Doe. Now I'm not going to get into the weeds, but just for you and your listeners knowledge to kind of figure out what we're talking about. The DNA that we're talking about here is measured in something called Sento Morgan's all right, So if you are the blood, the mother and a mother daughter relationship would have about a three thousand and five hundred cine Morgan relationship, right, that's a mother
daughter a sister would have about a twenty five hundred relationship. The first hit that we got from this woman in Pennsylvania was a one hundred and thirty one cent to Morgan she was a long way out there. Disa long way out there. However, from that bit, our genealogists were able to go back to about the eighteen fifties. And the first thing that they told us is this family lived in the area of Holly Springs, Mississippi. So that's a
small community near the Tennessee border. And then there was another part of the family in another part of Mississippi. But Holly Springs, Mississippi will get interesting towards the end of this, and I'll tell you why. But that was the first thing they told us. All Right, so we've got this person that's one hundred and thirty one cinamoregan relative of our Jain done. Once they get DNA from a person, they can then add that to and they start
building a family tree. So every time you get a DNA sample from one person, your goal is to have that lead you to a closer relative, if that makes sense. So then the next two years, that's what we did. We would go out. They would give us a list of names of potential relatives of the Jane Doe and they were all over the United States. And the course of this investigation, in four years, we contacted people and I think seven different states. Wow, we contacted over sixty people.
Now, a lot of people don't want you to get their DNA. Sure, most people don't want you to get their DNA. And you know we would have to call them and coach him and cajole them, and Okay, before you go any further, we got to take another break, believe it or not. Okay, So when we come back, try to pick up that thought. We're talking with Detective John Skipper with the Rodonda Beach Police Department, and we'll have more with him. But first, this is unsolved with
Steve Gregory kf I AM sixty. You're listening to kf I AM sixty on demand k if I AM six forty heard everywhere live on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and this is unsolved. If you're listening on the app, you can send us a tip about a case, a story, idea, or a comminent about the show. Just tap the red microphone on the app and record your message. Welcome back. We're inside an interview room part of
the Investigations Division of the Rodondo Beach Police Department. It's our first case with Rodondo BEACHPD. Before the break detective. You are talking about this fascinating run on this DNA DO project who has volunteers all over the country. And you said before the break that this slice of femur bone ultimately led to not only identification of the race of your victim, which is an African American woman, but that she has relatives spread out all over the United States. Right,
correct? And that and as to your point for the break, not everyone wants to be identified, Not everyone wants to be found, and people are still trying to balance that. I don't want you to have in my DNA too, well, I don't mind my DNA, so because I know that's part of the success with this, people have to voluntarily put their DNA into a system. Is that correct? With the gen match and the DNA DOE project. Correct. So you've identified some relatives now, albeit very distant.
You described what's next so as we would if you're just building upon your previous success in obtaining DNA, trying to get closer and closer and closer. So, yeah, like I said, more relatives than not refuse to give us DNA, politely refused. The interesting thing is the police do not get the DNA. We help locate the people and ask them to provide it. If they provide it, they either give us sample to put in ancestry, or if they're already in ancestry the database, they allow the DNA DOE project.
So the DNA DOE project keeps all the DNA. The police department only identifies the people and ask them to give it, so we never get the DNA, so we couldn't look up, you know. But anyway, so we keep doing that and it became overwhelming, honestly for my partner or not, because we're doing other parts of this investigation. Again, we're retired, we do this part time. I brought on a crime analyst to help us locate people, retired crime analyst. Her name's Don Switzer. She's an expert at
locating people through various law enforcement databases. And about on another reserve officer who's been a reserve officer for fifty years and he's just got great administrative skills, and he took over the task of locating people and calling them to get their DNA. So he did that for a good solid year. We did it for the year before that. What ultimately happens is after going through this process over and over, and like I say, sixty different people, most of
which said sorry, no DNA. He finds the DNA DOE project tells us of a gentleman in Gilroy, California, who they felt was in this treat Now they had no idea what how close of a relationship, but they did feel he was in this family tree. So Mike Stark, our other officer, drives up to Gilroy, collects a DNA sample far I means an elderly gentleman, and he collects the DNA sample the DNA dope. Roget calls us back and they tell us we are about four hundred and sixty cinamoregans on him,
which is just shy of a first cousin. So if I ask you who your third cousin is, you may not know him, but you know your first cousins. So they built the tree, and there was fifteen first cousins that this guy had, so our guy might start called every one of them. And a little over halfway through he gets to someone who says, oh, yeah, my sister went missing from Memphis, Tennessee in nineteen seventy
seven. Now I mentioned Holly Springs, Mississippi, was the first place we heard, well, Holly Springs, Mississippi is on the Mississippi side of the border, but it's a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee. So that was the first thing that they knew. So we found out the name of this person from the sister. We found out that she left Memphis, Tennessee and about nineteen seventy seven coming to California. The sister of the missing person directed us
to the daughter of the missing person, who told us more. She said, my mother was a drug addict. She was marginalized. That would be the term that we would use today. She had a difficult life here. She came back to visit me in nineteen eighty one and in May, and that's the last I've seen her. With that information, we start running law enforcement databases. We find that this person had been arrest Oh, I'm sorry. The daughter did also mention she got one letter from her mother in Inglewood,
So Inglewood is about five miles from where these bones were found. The law enforcement databases showed us that this person had numerous misdemeanor arrest many of them drug related, in the Inglewood Lennox area, and the last law enforcement contact with her was in August of nineteen eighty one, and she would be frequently arrested from her time in California from seventy seven till eighty one, there was numerous arrest for her and she was never arrested again, never heard from again.
So we felt comfortable that we were on to the right person. We then had a sample a DNA sample collected from the mother and daughter, and we had that done not through ancestry, well, we did it through ancestry first, but we had to ultimately do a confirmation from the Department of Justice because for an official confirmation, and we had the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation collect
that sample for us. That was in about late March early April. They did that of this year, twenty twenty three, and that came back because I had stated earlier the daughter mother relationship was thirty five hundred centa morgans and the sister was about twenty five hundred centa morgans, exactly what we would expect. So the Department of Justice and the La County Corner then said that this
is a positive identification of Captaine Parker Johnson, our missing person. When we come back, we'll talk more about Katherine Parker Johnson, because you had a press conference recently too to announce this and but what a fascinating journey. And then we'll also talk about what it is you need at this point. But first, this is Unsolved with Steve Gregory on kf I AM six forty. You're listening to kf I AM six forty on demand kf I AM six forty
live everywhere on the iHeartRadio Appum. I'm Steve Gregory. This is Unsolved. Welcome back. We're inside the Redondo Beach Police Department's Investigations Division. We're talking with Detective John Skipper. He's retired, but he also runs the department's cold case unit. In fact, he founded the unit back in two thousand and six, and this was a case that he'd been working on in a case
that he remembers some twenty something years ago. But up into the break, you've been giving us this fascinating DNA journey and started with a bag of dry bones in a yard of a property here in Redondo Beach. It's ended now with the identification of a young woman, young girl, Katherine Parker Johnson, and that was because of the DNA DOE project. So Detective right before the break, you dropped the bomb of the identification of Katherine Parker Johnson. What
do we know about this young girl? Well, as I had said, she was a person that had had a difficult life. She left her home Memphis, Tennessee, and left two children, a son and a daughter. They were young at the time, and she came to California. She had was involved in the drug scene, and she was I'm not saying that she was what we would now call a homeless person, but she you know, she lived on the street, maybe in motel rooms, things like that.
We don't know that. That's just my speculation, but I know from some of her arrest history that would be consistent with that lifestyle. I have to ask real quick, and I've referred to as a young girl because I was like, I'm looking at also photo here, so it was throwing me off on the age a little bit. Do you have an estimate on her age? And she would have been Yeah, she was born I believe in nineteen fifty seven, Okay, and she was she just the last known contact of
her I believe she was twenty four years old. Sorry about that, okay. I wanted to just clarify that, so so she she led that lifestyle. She did go home and visit her family in nineteen eighty one, never seen again. Her last known contact was in August of that year down in the Lennox Inglewood area, and she's never resurfaced after that. So what we're trying to do now is to learn about her life in California, in the Inglewood Lenox area. And we don't have any record of anyone that was an
associate or a friend of her in California. So we've got her photograph and what we're hoping to do is get her picture out enough that someone that knew her back in she was in California from the mid seventies, say seventy seven until nineteen eighty one, someone that recognizes her could call us and talk to us about her, her lifestyle, who she knew, where she live.
Those are the things we're trying to put together. Now. I know you've probably considered all this, but I do want to ask the question when you talk about her multiple arrests over the years, over her time here in southern California, do enny those police reports indicate known associates or people she was associated with, Because I know some police reports will include that kind of detail. So there was nothing in any of those police reports that would give you an
indication of who she was. I don't know, because we are unable to locate any of those police reports. We've got, actually, i'd say any. We've got one booking report from Long Beach that has no information about any associates, very little information on it about her. But you know, that's one of the big problems we find work in these coal cases, the record
retention capability of many different ages, It varies completely. I needed a report from the new Port Beach Police Department from nineteen seventy four relative to this case, and you know, I had it in thirty minutes. I needed a report from Redondo Beach from nineteen eighty one, and we don't have it. So, yeah, you know, And you're right though, you figure how many pairs of hands have touched these pieces of paper over the years, and
building people move buildings and relocation. LAPD's the same way, right, The LAPD's lost a lot of the archives. But well, then to your point, what about mugshots, DMV photos, nothing, all of those things we have as we sit here, we have dove deep into those things trying to obtain them, and we have not obtained anything as we speak. We've got, you know, enhanced efforts to try to obtain those. So sometimes it's who you talk to, and you know, when you get to the third
boss, you might be able to get something. And we're doing that and we're hoping that something's still going to come in. But right now we don't have anything like that. So as you sit here discussing the case, is there any other evidence at all? I mean, and I don't expect you to talk about the evidence itself if you have it, but is there anything at all that you're in possession of that could give you forward momentum in this
case? Well? There, yes, there is. There is evidence from the scene that we are trying to do, you know, new DNA technology on that didn't exist previously, hoping maybe we'll get something that might lead us to a suspect. I will tell you that there are at least two completely different theories that we are investigating now that could lead us to a suspect. They are unrelated. So if you know theory A is it, then theory B is out the window, and vice versa, and it could the theories
see that we don't know about yet. Do you want to share the theories? Uh? No, I don't think I can do that at this point in time. Well, then, um, do you think, based on your experience, was Catherine targeted or do you think she was part of something else? Well, depending on the theory. You know, there are theories out there that she could have willingly been involved in something that led to her death, and there are theories that her lifestyle could have put her in a
position where she would have been randomly targeted and selected. Before we wrap up here, detective, do you have any semblance of a description that you can share of her? Yeah? Yeah, she was you know, I don't have the information. She was a slight She was an African American woman of a medium complexion. I would say the photograph, you know, shows an attractive woman again, and her lifestyle at the time she died might have made her, you know, more gaunt and then appearing. I say she was
slight, you know, her weight was probably a hundred something pounds. I don't have that information in front of me. And she was, you know, under five feet five tall. I believe when you came out publicly with this information and announced her name. Did you get any calls? We got calls. You know, when you do this, and we've done this a number of times in the past, you know, we get tips that say, oh, have you thought about John Patrick Kearney, Yes, we have.
Have you thought about the Grim Sleeper? Yes, we have talked to the lead detective on the Grim Sleeper case, and you know it didn't match. There's a couple of calls that we've got that we did do follow ups and as we speak, we've not really found that smoking gun. Well, Detective, I can't thank you enough for sharing the story with us, and let's hope that this generates some more calls for you as well. Thank you
for having coming up. We head over to Monterey Park, where La County Sheriff's Detective Steve Blagg is standing by to debrief us on a case from twenty eighteen. But first, this is Unsolved with Steve Gregory on kf I AM six forty. You're listening to kf I AM six forty on demand, kf I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory and
this is Unsolved. La County Sheriff's homicide case number zero one eight zero zero zero two four dash three one nine nine zero one one the shooting death of Fabian Barraja's junior detective Steve Blagg is a friend of the show and wanted us to feature a case he's been working. Black says, it's a true mystery. A young man in his twenties, gainfully employed, no game ties, in fact, he's a gaming nerd, suddenly finds himself on the receiving end
of gunfire and the surveillance video shows he was targeted. Detective Blag breaks down the case of the cold killer in the cul de Sac So what Approximately twelve thirty am on April third, twenty and eighteen, there was a vehicle that collided through a fence into a business complex on Valley Boulevard, just west of
the six h five freeway. When Elmanti police officers arrived at the scene, they found mister Brajas alone in the vehicle in the driver's seat, suffering from what they later found to be a gunshot wound, and he was eventually pronounced deceased. And the gunshot wound what part of the body he sustained it to his upper torso like the right side of his upper torso shot one time,
multiple times, one time one time. So you say, on the early morning hours of twelve thirty in the morning, a vehicle collided into a building. No, threw a wrought iron fence into a building complex, building complex, So through the rout aff on the property. Correct, So the fence
is what stopped the vehicle. No, that he was going at a pretty high rate of speed and actually probably landed about a good hundred yards into the property of the business complex with a big chunk of the fence attached to his car. What kind of car he at that time? The victim was in a two thousand and twelve white Infinity G thirty seven. Did corner give you manner of death homicide? Homicide? But cause of death gunshot, gunshot wound?
What I was getting at was did he die from the gunshot wound or die from the car crash? No, he definitely died from the gunshot wound. Any evidence that the gunshot wound happened prior to the crash, Yes, it did so. And if he was speeding, if he's a high rate of speed going through this wrought iron fence, was that a reflex? They were like foot down on the pedal thing or was he still alive? I mean, we do have some surveillance video that kind of shed some light on
what we what happened and what led to the shooting from that night. Can you enlightness? Sure? So Fabian's vehicle, there's a small little cool de sac along the north side of Valley Boulevard near a scrap metal yard. We know that shortly before twelve thirty am, we were able to see Fabian's vehicle pull into this cul de sac from south to north and kind of angle to where it was going to make a U turn back facing southbound, but stopped.
I was able to see one figure get out of the right front passenger seat. That figure, to me appeared to be a male. The figure appeared to be pointing what looked like a fire our arm inside the car, and then it appeared as Fabian may have attempted to get away from that mail what a shot was fired and causing Fabian to now flee at a high rate of speed southbound on the cul de sac across Valley Boulevard and through that fence. So you saw that, you saw the shooting. Then the video wasn't
the best, but best I could make out. Yes, so if I heard you right, The person got out of the car then opened fire. Person got out of the car appeared to be pointing a gun, possibly at Fabian. What it appears that Fabian, being afraid and trying to get away, hits the accelerator as the suspect fires a shot. Okay, So as so the suspect got a lucky shot off basically basically, yes, it did.
It was the car too damage. Could you tell if the if the had gone through a window or windshield or no. It looked like the door was open when the suspect fired the shot. So there was no bullet impacts to that vehicle at all. And so how far from that scene in the cul de sac to the wrought iron fancy crashed through? That was maybe about five hundred yards or so? Five hundred yards? Yeah, then do you suppose it was our hospital nearby there? Do you think he was trying to
drive to a hospital or do you think he knew he was? I guess you can't really tell if he knew if he was shot or not. It almost looked like it was simultaneous. Is Fabian's car drives onto the cul de sac and kind of angles that you turn and stops. The suspect gets out of the right front passenger seat, and I think that's when Fabian saw his opportunity maybe to get away from this suspect. And as he hit the accelerator,
the suspect fires a shot. And then that five hundred yards across valley boulevard because at that point Fabian was fatally shot and he went across valley and through that fence where his car came to arrest, Okay. And then any type of a description on a shooter, all we can tell is a mail. There were some transients because to the north of that cul de sac or
railroad tracks, there were transients who were living along the railroad tracks. They reported seeing a male Hispanic running eastbound on the railroad tracks after they heard what sounded like a gunshot. But that was the only description we could get. And that area of La Monte, well, first of all, was Fabian from Elmonty No, Okay? Where is he from? At the time of the murder, Fabian resided with family in the city of Pomona, Okay.
What is that area of Elmonte like? Typically it's all industrial, all industrial so what took him to that spot? Do you think? We have no idea. We know that Fabian worked at a machine shop in Walnut. He worked kind of the swing shift where he started about three or three thirty and would work till about midnight most days, and usually he would close by himself according to the employer, his employer as well as his father, who also worked at the same machine shop. So for him to go from Walnut,
TELMANI, we have no reason why. We have no idea why, because he actually lived in the city of Pomona, which would have been opposite from ALMANI. Okay, when we come back, I want to ask you a little bit more about Fabian and exactly who he is a little bit of his background. At first, we're talking with Detective Steve Blagg with the Ely County Sheriff's Department. Thomas Saiberro. This is Unsolved Steve Gregory on kf I AM sixty. You're listening to kf I AM sixty man kf I AM six forty
live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I'm Steve Gregory. This is Unsolved. Welcome back. We're speaking with Detective Steve Blagg with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Hommside Bureau. We're inside the bureau down in Monterey Park. He's been telling us about the case of Fabian Barajas Jr. A twenty year old who was shot in the early morning hours of April third, twenty eighteen, in an industrial area of El Monty. Before the break, detective, you were
telling us a little bit about Fabian. He worked at a machine shop in Walnut and worked by himself sometimes, but it was unusual, you said, because he was trying to figure out why he would be either from his workshop in Walnut or where he lived in Pomona. What brought him to El Monty. Colin so backtracking that friends, relatives, girlfriend, boyfriend, anything that you know. So we know that Fabian lived with his mother and Pomona.
He did not currently have any significant other. He did not have a girlfriend at the time. Fabian or Chico Is his family knew him as was. He had recently bought the Infinity that was kind of like his Pride and Joy, his first real card that he had. He according to family, Fabian was kind of a nerdish kid. He loved gaming, He loved anime, he was into back then in twenty eighteen, big thing was was Pokemon in chasing Pokemon, and he was into that as well. But he was just
a normal kid. No criminal record whatsoever, no history of drug or alcohol use that we were able to find at all. He's just a kid. He started working because he wanted to buy his car. He accomplished that, but continued working to help his mom make ends meet. So he was an only child. There were other there are other children, but yeah, we none that factor into this case. Okay, So no lifestyle or history with
the siblings that would cause you concern. No, the Pokemon craze. I know it sounds a little unusual right now, but the Pokemon craze, there was a you know, I think there was a trend of them going out and chasing it. Like you said, right, yes, do you suppose I mean, did you have any other cases where people got sucked in on duped into doing things like this, you know, and then be robbed or anything like that. I mean, I'm sure you've explored all options, but
was that something that you even looked at? We did, I mean we looked at his He had a very very thin social media presence, so it's not he Fabian was not into social media. Anything we looked at from regarding you know, the chasing of Pokemon. We don't believe that that factored into this at all, into his murder were you know, we have a few potential theories of what we think happened with him inside that car, but nothing that we can prove at this time. Can you explore one of those theories
with us? I mean, based upon where Fabian was shot and where he ended up in ELMANI one working theory is that he was carjacked. Is he left work? I mean unfortunately, when we went back out to Canvas where he worked, there were no working surveillance cameras in the area of his business. One, Like I said, one working theory is that when he got off of work, somebody was lying in for him, either whether it be somebody he knows or he doesn't know, and this was an attempt carjacking.
I mean, they drove him to or they forced him to drive potentially to a very secluded area in El Money, which that call De Sac. There's hardly any lights about. The only vehicle traffic is on Valley Boulevard and it's enough out of you to where if somebody wanted to rob someone, it's a perfect spot. Or there was somebody he knew that he allowed in the car then at some point decided to maybe steal the car or rob him. We don't know, because it looks like when Fabian attempted to get away is when
he was shot. So based on your experience going back all these years, you know, those two seem very viable theories. Anything unusual about this case that you know, you got your theories in place, But is there anything unusual about this case that you just can't put your finger on why or one how the suspect got into his car, especially without leaving any traces of DNA that I mean, we went through that car with a fine tooth comb.
There was no traces of DNA other than Fabians and no fingerprints, no type of forensic evidence that can link us to a potential suspect inside of that vehicle. I mean, I know that there's people out there that know what happened, and I'm hoping something like this will bring it bring someone forward to talk to us. In the surveillance video, you said, all you could really
make out was it was a man. You couldn't even make out the ethnicity though right the race gloves no gloves couldn't tell again due to the poor quality of the video and the distance of the camera. Yeah, it could not tell. But that's pretty significant if you've got a shooter and there's absolutely no
trace of DNA. Is that unusual or is that pretty specific in the world of DNA today, That's pretty unusual only because whether it be hair follicles, touch DNA from touching door handles, touched DNA from touching seat belts and seat belt buckles. Our labs do very good at getting that type of evidence. And with this we not one shred of evidence. Wow. Yeah, because you have to open the door, have to get out, get in.
Fabian did not open the door to allow this suspect to get out. That person who was seated on the passenger seat would have had of the door handle on their own. Wow. So were there any similar crimes detective around that time that like, was it part of a rash of carjackings or a rash of robberies that you could tell? None that we had seen. Again,
we handled this case at the request of El Monty Police Department. When I spoke with their detectives, there were no series of carjackings in that area or any reports of victims being brought to that area to be robbed and then left. Think about the only thing that Elmani PD had in that area was a lot of drug use and some prostitution, but there were no signs of that when we were there that night, nor anything on the video that indicated that
is what led to Fabian's murder. Okay, to wrap this up in your in your heart and in your experience, what do you think happened? I think Fabian was taken at gunpoint from either his where he worked or somewhere close by, was forced to drive to this area of Elmani for a robbery, and when he attempted to get away, he was shot and killed. Detective, what is it you want from people? I want people with knowledge of this case to come forward to give a call. They can remain anonymous.
They don't not have to leave a name, a phone number, anything, but just to point us in the right direction for Chico and his family, just to bring them closure because this has hit his family hard and this is a case that we need to solve. Detective, always a pleasure, Thank you for your time. Oh, you're very welcome, thank you, and
that's going to do it. Unsolved with Steve Gregory. The radio show is a production of the KFI News Department for iHeartMedia, Los Angeles and is produced by Steve Gregory and Jacob Gonzalez. Our field engineer is Tony Sarrantino and our digital producer is Nate Ward. To hear this episode and others from past seasons, download Unsolved with Steve Gregory on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen KFI Ami on demand