A Murder That Has A Suspect, A Motive But No Proof | The New Detectives | Real Responders

In Northern California, a man sacrifices everything to prove that his sister's death was no accident. A sympathetic detective with a brilliant theory becomes his only ally. A young woman disappears and everyone is convinced that she has been

murder

ed. Texas investigators have a

suspect

and a

motive

, but at least there is no evidence. He's not yet a sexual predator who terrorizes a quiet Colorado neighborhood when his spree suddenly ends. The authorities have no way of finding him. Anyone can get away with

murder

at least for a while, but as long as a murder remains unsolved, it also remains open and justice favors. the unforgettable in this episode some of the names have been changed on february 22, 1985 palo alto california police were sent to the home of james and abigail nebauer james niebauer, 56, told officers that his wife abby , one of Northern California's most acclaimed poets, had been accidentally shot when officers entered, finding the 47-year-old mother of three dead on the kitchen floor.

She had suffered a massive shotgun blast to the chest. Police collected a partially disassembled antique shotgun that was lying on the ground a few feet from Abby's body. on a nearby table police noticed polishing rags and other cleaning supplies crime scene technicians photographed the scene james niebauer a physical education therapist for a local public school system explained what had happened said his wife was gone out to run errands that same afternoon james had just returned from a ski trip with his youngest son he worked to finish restoring an antique shotgun he planned to give to one of his sons when abby returned a few hours later he was eager to show her the progress he had made accomplished while she was admiring the workmanship of the barrel the shotgun inexplicably fired james had no idea the old gun was loaded nor could he explain why it fired he couldn't believe his 27 year old wife was gone at the autopsy the coroner established the official cause of death as a gunshot wound to the victim's heart abby's death had been instantaneous the examiner also studied the gunpowder burns left on her blouse based on their size and location on the sleeves and concluded that the burn patterns were consistent with James' story that Abbey had been trying to reach the barrel when the shotgun misfired, but when news of the shooting began to spread through Palo Alto, Abby's friends went to the police convinced that her tragic death was not a accident.

A close friend told police that James and Abby's 27-year marriage had turned sour. In recent years, the Nebauers, she said, had remained together only for the sake of their three children. In fact, Abby planned to file for divorce after her youngest son left for college in a few months, until then Abby hoped to minimize tensions in the house by converting. the couple's garage in her own apartment, but James refused to let him go. He often exploded in anger accusing Abby of seeing other men despite James Nebauer's story to the contrary. Her friends were convinced Abby would never have approached him while she was holding a gun.

Forensic technicians. They examined the old shotgun after extensive analysis and could find no obvious flaws in the trigger mechanism that would explain why the shotgun had fired spontaneously. However, when police reviewed all the facts of the case, they concluded that Abby's death was consistent with an accidental shooting. Abby Niebauer's shotgun and clothing were returned to her husband more than 700 miles away at Olympia Washington Abbey. Washington Abbey brother Lee Sansom had been following the investigation, aware of his sister's turbulent marriage, and also refused to accept that her death had been an accident. He surprised me a lot.

When a friend of my sister sent me a newspaper clipping stating that the shooting had been declared an accident by the police, that was the last thing I thought would happen. Abby's brother traveled to the Palo Alto district attorney's office hoping to convince them that this case warranted a closer look although he had no physical evidence he believed he could establish a

motive

for the murder he said just two weeks before Abby's death her recently deceased parents' estate had been liquidated Abby's inheritance was 180,000, she confided in her brother that she planned to keep it in an account where James couldn't touch it, however, if Abby died before Once their divorce was finalized, the money would automatically go to James Nebauer, which is exactly how it was playing out, but ultimately the authorities were not swayed and Lee.

Sansom quickly

real

ized that if he wanted to find justice for his sister he would have to find solid physical evidence on his own as he struggled to find a way to expose his brother-in-law's crime, he received a letter from authorities in Palo Alto I received a letter from response saying that they didn't

real

ly feel like there was any reason for the local prosecutor to probably know what they were doing and that there was no reason for them to investigate further and not be willing to accept the official. Ruler Sansom made a difficult decision, quit his job as a computer programmer and began investing all his time and money into finding financial justice for his sister.

I lost everything that I had saved for my retirement and what I had inherited from my parents and uh, as I say, there were big stretches of time where I was waiting for some results and it was very difficult, sounds like a good one. Eight years passed without interruption, then Samsung heard about a survivor advocacy group called Citizens Against Homicide, the group got in touch. Palo Alto Police Department and persisted until authorities agreed to re-examine Abby's death. When Homicide Detective Michael Yore reviewed the files, he was shocked at what he found. My first impression in this particular case was that there was a homicide.

That this happened was not an Accident with the help of Lee Sansom, the detective of yesteryear, a firearms expert recovered the old shotgun and examined it for himself, leaving him with more questions than answers, how can you get one single shot shotgun? Where do you have 14 pounds of pressure in the shotgun? get something like that where you've taken the time to remove the foregrip, you've taken the time to remove the stock, you unscrew all these pieces and then you don't realize that this is a single shot shotgun that's Loaded and cocked, take another look at the must-see find.

To reopen the case,

detectives

began by interviewing the couple's youngest son, who was living at home at the time of the shooting. He told police that just hours before his mother was killed, he and his father had decided to return home from skiing a day earlier. trip when they entered the house he said his father suddenly stopped listening because of a sign that Abby was there with another man oh nothing uh listen abby wasn't home his father seemed agitated and then suggested he go out and have fun that night he thought The son This was peculiar since his father rarely let him go out, even on weekends, he went and never saw his mother alive again.

Detective Yore was convinced that James Niebauer had sent his son away for a reason because he didn't want any witnesses to the shooting, but until investigators could find a way to find solid physical evidence to prove that Abby's murder would still be officially an accident after 10 years. Police in Palo Alto, California, agreed to reopen the investigation into the death of 47-year-old Abby Niebauer, surprised by her husband James. She worked to restore an antique shotgun, although they now

suspect

ed she had been murdered. Investigators lacked physical evidence to prove it. They were convinced something had been overlooked years before Detective Michael Yore examined the coroner's report.

The medical examiner had declared that the gunpowder burned Abby's sweater. were consistent with her reaching toward the barrel of the gun when she fired it. When the detective saw the photos for himself, he came to a different conclusion: the powder burns he noticed were on the outside forearm area of ​​the sweater, which is a mismatch. with someone approaching and having been shot directly in the chest, so that's what initially made me sit up and ask how else it could have happened to once again find out that the detective once devised his own forensic experiment using the shotgun With mannequins donated from a department store and white dress shirts from his own closet, the detective set out to replicate the gunpowder burns on Abby's clothing using James' version of events as a starting point at 22 inches tall. , but that scenario failed to reproduce the same patterns.

He continued to adjust the position of the mannequin. arms and shooting distance from her, after several days of shooting tests, he was finally able to replicate the burns on Abby's clothing at 11 inches away. The shotgun blast produced identical burn patterns and the defensive position of the arms suggested that Abby Niebauer knew what was about to happen. for her and now this changes the scenario that she was looking at the bright colors that were on the gun itself that she voluntarily had a shotgun placed in her heart and she did it with her consent to that now she had a shotgun placed in her heart and she in a terrified position of alfred hitchcock an independent forensic authority confirmed the results of detective yore's tests and now the palo alto district attorney was convinced that james niebauer had murdered his wife james nebauer, now 69, was arrested in At Seattle Tacoma International Airport, when he returned from a trip to Germany, he was extradited to California where he was tried for the murder of his wife.

Police believe that James Nebauer recognized that his marriage was over and that the only way to profit from Abby's recent inheritance was to kill her before the divorce was finalized after sending her son. He left the house, James charged and cocked the old shotgun and waited patiently for his unsuspecting wife to enter the kitchen. He shot and killed her instantly. He then staged the scene to make it look like he had been cleaning the gun in 1999. James Nebauer was convicted. of first-degree murder and sentencing the victim's brother, Lee Sansom, to 27 years in prison, it was the end of a long fight for justice, but not the end of the mystery.

I still wonder why Chimney Bar could take my sister's life after she got married. to her for all those years and do it not in an angry way but in a carefully planned way and I still wonder how she could do that, even though some homicide investigations can go on for years without a break. Justice has a long memory and forensic advances. technology can warm an otherwise cold case Houston, Texas, July 25, 1987. In the afternoon, a work crew working on a rural highway was preparing to end its work day without warning, a motorist A man passing by suddenly opened fire and one of the workers was hit in the leg.

A co-worker managed to obtain the truck's license number as the vehicle sped away. The information was quickly called to the Harris County Sheriff's Office. Within a few hours, Detective Marcel Dion had tracked the tag to a car dealership owned by a man named Michael Neal. he went to the car lot to interview Neil about the shooting, but according to an employee there, a young woman named Tracy Joe Shine, Michael Neal wasn't around, is that him, here's Michael? The

detectives

asked her about her current whereabouts but she was incoherent and seemed unable to answer any questions, Tracy Joe seemed to have received an injection or taken some type of drug and I tried to get her to tell me where Michael Neal was because it was him. who I was looking for.

The officers asked me to look nearby. tracy joe, the detective, found a bag containing a powdered substance, hey detective, i think in the back room the agent discovered a makeshift laboratory used to make methamphetamine, a potent form of speed, is this your stuff in this other room?, although tracy joe claimed not to know anything about her being placed under arrest bobby neal michael neal's brother and co-owner of the car dealership was also arrested on drug charges now with drug charges pending tracy joe was willing to talk with the police about michael neal said that she and michael were romantically involved.

In fact, the two shared a house, although she did not know where he was currently. She told police he was the man who had shot the highway worker. She said she and Michael Neal were out for a ride in her truck. He was shooting a gun. at random targets and thought it would be funshoot the workers. Tracy Joe didn't know that he actually intended to hit them. She said she would be willing to testify against her boyfriend if the police agreed to drop the drug charges against her until then. she refused to make an official statement tracy joe was released on bail when she left, she told me she would come back to me and help me with the case, but over a month went by without a word from the witness, then on september 9 .

Tracy Joe's mother, Virginia Shine, came to talk to police. She hadn't heard from her daughter in almost three weeks. Tracy Joe Shine, the star witness in an attempted murder investigation, was now missing. Police in Harris County, Texas, were closing in on Michael Neal, the principal. The suspect in a random drive-by shooting left a highway worker lucky to be alive, although Neil's girlfriend, Tracy Joe Shine, had agreed to testify against him. She was now missing, although the timing of her disappearance was suspicious. Investigators had to consider that she had left town to avoid having to testify against her boyfriend, but then Detective Marcel Dion received a call.

A woman who wished to remain anonymous claimed to have information about a man who had murdered his girlfriend in his house had supposedly been put in a 55 gallon drum of muriatic acid and had been dismembered just before that, the informant began telling me the names involved and she named michael neal and tracy joe shiny. The informant heard rumors that the victim's remains had been transported to Michael Neal's car lot in a refrigerator after being in his home for three days. Investigators obtained a warrant to search the car dealership's premises, although Michael Neal did not I was at work.

Harris County authorities began searching the area to the side of the building. The technicians found an abandoned refrigerator, it was unplugged and open as if it were being ventilated. It appeared to have been recently cleaned, but as examiners soon discovered that there were not enough remains still attached to its surfaces, including what appeared to be a small fragment of meat, researchers collected the sample and sent it to the laboratory for analysis in 1987. DNA tests were performed. was in its infancy and required large samples with such a small sample to work with. Examiners could only conclude that the DNA extracted from the refrigerator was human and that it came from a woman, the process had consumed the entire sample, preventing researchers from They will perform more tests.

However, the discovery of female human tissue supported the anonymous caller's claims that Tracy Joe Shine had been murdered and sought additional evidence to corroborate the story. Police searched Michael Neal's room where Tracy Joe's body had allegedly been kept for three days if Tracy Joe had been murdered. There, police and forensic technicians could find no evidence to prove that anyone found anything. Michael Neal's whereabouts also remained a mystery. In November 1987, four months after Tracy Joe's disappearance, investigators had a break. michael neal had been located in san antonio. was in police custody for having shot a man in the face through his lawyer Michael refused to comment on the whereabouts of Tracy Joe Shine, although investigators believed he was involved in her disappearance, they lacked physical evidence if You present a case like this in front of a jury and the jury says okay.

You know what happens if we convict this guy and then Tracy Joe shows up and it's very difficult when someone disappears to assume that this person is dead? Investigators would have to find another way to present their case. They interviewed dozens of inmates serving time with Michael Neal. Hoping that the suspect had bragged about the murder, but aside from rumors, no one had any useful information. For months, detectives searched the surrounding area hoping for any sign of the missing woman, but the investigation into Tracy Joe Shine's disappearance went cold and would stay that way. Over the next 12 years, in 1999, Harris County detectives had formed a cold case team to deal with a growing number of unsolved crimes while they evaluated old files, found the Tracy Joe Shine case report, agreed They agreed that his disappearance required a closer look and, although more than a decade had passed, Detective Roger Wedgworth believed that the passage of time could benefit him.

People who divorce are more likely to talk about an ex-husband than their wives. current husband people no longer feel threatened by individuals He could be imprisoned in something like that, so time helps us. One of the people mellowed by time was Michael Neal's brother Bobby, who had been imprisoned 12 years earlier for manufacturing methamphetamines. His parole hearing was approaching and now he was willing to tell what he knew. Whatever Bobby said when Tracy Joe disappeared, he went to his brother's house and found Michael in the garage trying to load a duct-taped refrigerator into his truck. This thing here, where do you want to put it? truck the place stank and michael was burning incense to cover the smell bobby helped his brother put the refrigerator in the truck then they took it to the car dealership and unloaded it what happened to her bobby said she had no idea what was inside, although it was Being cooperative investigators, we felt that he had not told her everything, we felt that Bobby had seen his body in the refrigerator and we wanted him to tell us, and we felt that because he was incarcerated at the time, we could possibly pressure him to tell the truth, but the suspect's brother did not speak.

Still, the information he provided focused the investigation once again on the refrigerator. Unfortunately, Detective Marcel Dion, who had worked on the case 12 years earlier, had ensured that the evidence remained in police custody for I don't know how many years. Many times everyone tried to get me to let go of that refrigerator so they could get it out of our property room and I didn't let him go because I knew that was the only real evidence we had after dismantling the appliance technicians. They set to work searching for evidence, finding and collecting several previously undetected biological samples, although investigators had no known samples from Tracy Joe to compare with the evidence.

She was sent for genetic testing at a DNA testing lab that opened the year after Tracy Joe. disappeared, but the police-owned room where the refrigerator had been for 12 years was not climate controlled and forensic scientist William Watson was not optimistic. I didn't think there was a good chance of generating a DNA profile from the samples they had simply because of the condition they were in and the environment they had been in, and in fact the samples were too degraded for the conventional DNA testing; However, a new procedure was being developed: a technique called mitochondrial DNA sequencing analyzes a specific strand of DNA in the cell. core that was passed unchanged from mother to child, potentially examiners could determine whether the latest evidence recovered from the refrigerator and came from Virginia Shine's biological son was the perfect type of case for this type of evidence because all other types of evidence were they had exhausted. and we were against the wall there was really nothing we could say about the samples that were found inside the refrigerator except that back in 1987 they determined that they were from a human and that was it if we didn't get a profile with mitochondrial DNA we weren't going to have anything in absolute the procedure was a success the examiners then compared the profile generated in the refrigerator with those of tracy joe's mother, virginia shiny, the results coincided and we then observed the general power in a court of law, the small samples were enough to constitute The victim's deceased body, after 12 years of waiting, advanced forensic technology had provided investigators with evidence that Tracy Joe Shiny had been murdered.

In 2000, Michael Neal, imprisoned on unrelated charges, was confronted with evidence confirming Tracy Joe's body had been in his refrigerator. He faced the death penalty. He confessed to the murder. He said that after learning that Tracy Joe was cooperating with police in the investigation of the highway workers' shooting, her anger turned deadly and he strangled her to death three days later. He cut up her body, placed it in the refrigerator, and then disposed of her remains after pleading guilty. Michael Neal was sentenced to 45 years in prison for first-degree murder. When tackling a crime, investigators faced two scenarios: a lack of clues that fit the suspect or foul play. of suspects to fit the clues fort collins colorado august 29, 1989 early in the afternoon a real estate agent was showing potential buyers a house in a desirable neighborhood as they headed to the master bedroom they stumbled upon a gruesome find : the current owner 39 year old Sarah Dean was lying dead on the floor after receiving the frantic call from the Fort 911 police department, they rushed to the scene, there, in the second floor bedroom, they found the victim with a telephone cord wrapped tightly around his neck.

Sarah Dean had also been sexually assaulted. A spilled glass of water found near her body suggested she had been taken by surprise. Police searched the nearby bathroom. There are probably many in the bathtub. They found debris that had been traced from the outside. The window was open for investigators. This marked the possible death of the murderer. Entry point looking to uncover additional evidence Crime scene technicians applied a laser wand to the entire area, which causes proteins found in body fluids to fluoresce. The laser exposed several spots down here. The samples were collected and preserved as evidence while police processed the exterior of the home.

They located and collected a palm print on the closed kitchen window, but it was not known when it might have been left there or by whom. No stair marks or other signs of forced entry were found. At the autopsy, the medical examiner confirmed that Sarah Dean had been brutally beaten before being sexually assaulted and then strangled to death, the medical examiner collected additional biological evidence and blood typing analysis confirmed that she matched all samples collected from the crime scene; everything had originated in one individual; The police resorted to the recovered palm print. to tell them who it was, although the elevator had provided a clear image of the palm print, a search of databases containing fingerprint records turned up no matches until investigators were able to find a way to link all the evidence to a suspicious.

Sarah Dean's killer would remain a Free Man police in Fort Collins, Colorado, struggled to solve the brutal rape and murder of 39-year-old Sarah Dean, and although they had collected incriminating physical evidence at the crime scene, they had no solid suspects to link him to using photographs taken at the scene investigators worked on. To develop a profile of Sarah's killer, to reach the open second-floor bathroom window, the suspect had to scale a fence, grab the gutter pipe, and then climb onto the roof, suggesting the perpetrator was young and agile, probably a teenager with an An overwhelming amount of physical evidence to prove that murder Lieutenant Jim Broderick needed to find a way to identify the suspect.

I guess there was a sort of sense of confidence the whole time we were working that we were finding evidence of the intruder, it was just a matter of identifying who the intruder was, Lieutenant Broderick ran the victim's name through the database. data from the authorities. Sarah Dean's name had recently been entered into the system. She had filed a police report 10 days before she was murdered, according to reports. Sarah called the police after returning home. One night she discovered that her house had been burglarized. Among the stolen items were a tape player, a red and blue gym bag, two bottles of wine and several pairs of black underwear, but responding officers found no signs of forced entry or clues to the thief's identity in that investigation.

It quickly cooled off for investigators. The fetishistic aspects of the robbery and the sexual nature of the homicide made it easy to connect the two crimes. Lieutenant Broderick speculated that the robbery might have been some kind ofdress rehearsal for the young suspect who knew the general layout of the house, perhaps even knew, based on the amount of time he had spent in the house, that on the previous occasion, 10 days earlier, certain windows were not locked even though the evidence suggested a stranger's crime. Investigators still couldn't eliminate the possibility that the killer was someone she knew. Police interviewed Sarah Dean's co-workers, friends and acquaintances, starting with her fiancé.

She told police that he and Sarah had recently gotten engaged and planned to marry in a few months. Excited about their future together, Sarah was in the process of selling her house so they could buy a new one together. She had no idea who could have done this to Sarah before freeing her fiancé. Police collected blood samples. Serological tests later confirmed that he was not the killer. Over the next few months, hundreds of local residents, including known sex offenders, were brought in for questioning and all were asked to submit blood samples. I bet there were three to four hundred people who actually had blood samples taken compared to the evidence at the scene but no one was being matched the search for Sarah Dean's killer turned up nothing so in september of 1989, A month after the homicide, Fort Collins police discovered a lead, a car that had recently been reported stolen was found abandoned on the side of the road inside.

The officer picked up a baseball cap with the initials DT Junior written on the brim, believing that the teens had stolen the car the robbery detectives contacted area high schools and looked for students with those initials thank you for coming let's have a seat they found a sixteen year old -Old Douglas Thames Jr was questioned when asked about the hat. He claimed that he had lent it to some friends of his a few weeks earlier and never got it back with his mother present. Thames denied stealing the car within hours of the police. They had located the two young men, not only did they admit to having stolen the car, but they also confessed to being part of a gang responsible for robbing some houses in the area, they showed the police where they kept their stolen belongings, among the electronic devices and others. goods, the police found a red and blue.

Sports bag like the one Sarah Dean reported stolen 10 days before his murder. Officers confronted the teens with evidence linking them to the homicide, but the boys denied any knowledge of it and refused to release the names of other teens involved in the robberies. Blood samples and palm prints were collected, but none matched the evidence recovered from the crime scene for investigators. The setback was frustrating over the course of the next four or five years. Nothing just came. I mean, there are good leads based on people arrested in other jurisdictions. for similar crimes, but you know you do the serology testing and it just doesn't match our crime scene six years after sarah dean was found brutally murdered in her home, police were no closer to finding her killer in 1995, six years had passed since Sarah Dean, 39, was found sexually assaulted and murdered in her Fort Collins, Colorado home, although police had gathered an overwhelming amount of physical evidence from the crime scene, they struggled to link her to a suspicious.

The case had been based on a stop, but in July 1995 that all changed, a heating technician working on a boiler in a rented house made a strange discovery while working to fix a clogged air duct. He found several pairs of women's underwear stuffed inside and recalled details of the robbery and murder of Sarah Dean to which he called police Lieutenant Broderick responded. the caller was hopeful that this could be the breakup that eluded authorities for years in there. Yes, when he saw her underwear he realized they matched the description of the ones Sarah Dean had reported stolen 10 days before her murder.

The detective collected the items and sent them to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. There, laboratory examining agent Ted Devalus located and extracted biological evidence from several of the items even though the samples had remained for six years in an air duct. of an oven. Agent Devalus was confident that new DNA technology would allow him to obtain valuable evidence, I would have been concerned about doing the old ABL typing and some of the protein markers that are most subject to degradation. DNA is very stable and again, what we do is we always go ahead and try to develop a DNA profile to see if we can be successful or not.

Devalus was able to develop a genetic profile of the suspect from evidence recovered from the underwear when it was compared to biological evidence recovered from the Sarah Dean crime scene. Devalus concluded that all of the samples in this case had originated from an individual who had established a physical link between the crime scene and the rental home. Investigators raced to find out who had lived there at the time of the murder and we hoped they might have played a role. Fortunately, the owner kept meticulous records, he told police. that in August 1989 the house was rented to a family that had some teenage children, one named Douglas Thames Jr. the teenager who had provided information to investigators six years earlier, yes they just arrived, a check of state records revealed that douglas thames Jr, now 22 years old, lived several hundred miles away in Grand Junction , Colorado, armed with a warrant to obtain blood samples and fingerprints from Douglas Thames Jr.

Detective Broderick headed to Grand Junction with Thames at his workplace where he worked as a roofer who was uncooperative with police. Convinced he was hiding something, investigators took handprints and collected blood samples before releasing the suspect. Go straight up after developing a DNA profile from Douglas Thames Junior's known blood samples. Agent Devalus compared it to the evidence found at the crime scene and in the underwear recovered from the oven all the samples matched the fort collins police who had found sarah dean's killer the police returned to grand junction this time with an arrest warrant you have the right to speak to a lawyer douglas thames jr was arrested and charged with sarah's murder in 1989 Dean police believe that 10 days after breaking into Sarah Dean's home, the 16-year-old came slipping back through the open window of the second floor bathroom.

Thames caught his victim completely off guard. Sarah Dean probably never knew what hit her for the crime of first degree murder. Douglas Thames jr sentenced to life in prison when a murder investigation goes unsolved, some killers feel safe putting their deeds behind them armed with patience and the latest forensic technology investigators can heat up a cold case and find justice for the forgotten.