The Unforgotten | FULL EPISODE | The New Detectives

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 and everyone is convinced she has been murdered. Texas investigators have a suspect and a motive, but no evidence, at least not yet a sexual link. The predator terrorizes a quiet Colorado neighborhood when his spree suddenly ends. The authorities have no way of finding him. Anyone can get away with it for a while, but as long as a murder remains unsolved, it will also remain open and justice favors the unforgettable in this

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. of the names were changed On February 22, 1985, Palo Alto, California police were dispatched to the home of James and Abigail Niebauer.

I can communicate? James Niebauer, 56, told officers that his wife Abby, one of Northern California's most acclaimed poets, had been accidentally shot when officers entered and found the 47-year-old mother of three dead. on the kitchen floor. She had suffered a massive shotgun blast to the chest. Police picked up 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 overseas. A physical education therapist from a local public school system explained what had happened. He said his wife had left to run errands that afternoon.

James had just returned from a ski trip with his youngest son. He worked to finish restoring an antique shotgun that he planned to give to one of his sons. He was eager to show her the progress he had made while she admired the workmanship. barrel the shotgun fired inexplicably James had no idea the old gun was loaded nor could he explain why it went off he couldn't believe his 27 year old wife was gone his autopsy the coroner established the official cause of death as a gunshot wound The examiner also studied the dust the burns left on her blouse based on its size and location on the sleeves and concluded that the burn patterns were consistent with James' story that Abby's death had been instantaneous.

Abby had been reaching for the barrel when the shotgun misfired, but as news of the shooting began to spread through Palo Alto, Abby's friends went to the police convinced that her tragic death had not been an accident. A close friend told police that James and Abby's 27-year marriage had turned sour in recent years. Annie Bauer said that they had stayed 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. converting the couple's garage into his own apartment here but James refused to let him go he often exploded in anger accusing Abby of seeing other men happy he began to fear for his own safety the story of Spike James Niebauer on the contrary the friends were convinced Abby would never have approached him while holding him Forensic gun technicians examined the old shotgun and found no obvious flaws in the trigger mechanism that would explain why the shotgun had spontaneously discharged;

However, when police reviewed all the facts of the case, they concluded that Abby's death was consistent with an accidental shotgun discharge and Abby Niebauer's clothes were returned to her husband overseas, more than 700 miles away. , in Olympia, Washington. Abby's brother, Lee Sansom, had been following the investigation, aware of her sister's turbulent marriage, and also refused to accept that her death had been an accident. I was very surprised when a friend of my sister sent me a newspaper clipping stating that the shooting had been declared an accident by the police. I would be 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 had liquidated her recently deceased parents' estate. Abby's inheritance was one hundred and eighty thousand dollars, she confided. She told her brother she planned to keep it in an account where James couldn't touch it; However, if Abby died before her divorce was finalized, the money would automatically go to James Niebauer, which is exactly how it was playing out.

But in the end the authorities did not do it. He leaned in and Lee Sansum quickly realized that if he was going to find justice for his sister, he would have to find solid physical evidence on her behalf as he struggled to find a way to expose her brother-in-law's crime. she, he received a letter. From the Palo Alto authorities I got the letter from him saying that they really didn't feel there was any reason why the local prosecutor probably knew what they were doing and that there was no reason for them to inadvertently investigate further. To accept the official ruling, Sansum 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 he had set aside for my retirement and what he had inherited. from my parents and, as I say, there were long periods of time in which I was waiting for some results and it was very difficult, it seems good. Eight years passed without interruption, then Sansum heard about a survivor advocacy group called Citizens Against Homicide, they agreed to help him start the investigation. Yes, the group contacted the 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 surprised at what he found.

My first impression on this. The particular case was that a homicide occurred. This was no accident with the help of Detective Lee Sansum. Yore, a firearms expert, recovered the old shotgun and examined it for himself, leaving him with more questions than answers. How can you get a single shot shotgun? well, where you have 14 pounds of pressure on the shotgun, how could you get something like that where you take the time to remove the foregrip, you take the time to remove the stock, you unscrew all these pieces and then you don't realize that This is a loaded and cocked single shot shotgun.

Take another look at this case. The discovery forced

detectives

to reopen the case. I'm sorry for your mother. They began by interviewing the couple's youngest son, who lived in the home at the time of the shooting. He told police just a few hours. Before his mother was killed, he and his father had decided to return home the day before from a ski trip when they entered the house, he said his father suddenly stopped listening for a sign that Abby was there with another man oh nothing, listen, Abby was. At home his father seemed agitated and then suggested he go out and have fun that night.

The son thought 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. She had sent her son away for a reason that she didn't want there to be witnesses to the shooting, but until investigators could find a way to find solid physical evidence to prove murder, Abby's death would officially remain an accident after 10 years as a police officer in Palo Alto, California. He agreed to reopen the investigation into the death of Abby Niebauer, 47, shot by her husband James while working to restore an antique shotgun.

Thanks, although they now suspected she had been murdered, investigators lacked physical evidence to prove it. They were convinced that something had happened. overlooked years before Detective Michael Yore examined the coroner's report, the medical examiner had stated that gunpowder burns on Abby's sweater were consistent with her reaching toward the barrel of the gun when it fired, when Detective Yore saw the photos for himself, coming to a different conclusion: The gunpowder burns he noticed were on the outside forearm area of ​​the sweater, which is inconsistent with someone walking up and being shot directly in the chest, so that's what initially made me sit up and wonder how else finding Detective Yore devised his own forensic experiment using the antique shotgun with donated mannequins 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, but that scenario failed to reproduce the same patterns. He continued to adjust the position of the dummy's arms and its shooting distance. After several days of test shooting, he was finally able to replicate the burns on Abby's clothing from 11 inches away. The shotgun blast produced identical burn patterns. the defensive position of the arms suggested that Abby Niebauer knew what was about to happen to her and now this changes the scene as she was looking at the bright colors on the gun and they voluntarily put a shotgun to her heart and she did it. with her consent to have a shotgun placed in her heart and her in a terrified Alfred Hitchcock-like position, an independent forensic authority confirmed that it would take her test results and now the Palo Alto district attorney was convinced that James Niebauer had murdered his wife James Niebauer now. 69 year old was arrested at Seattle Tacoma International Airport while returning from a trip to Germany You have the right to stay He was extradited to California where he was tried for the murder of his wife Police believe James Niebauer acknowledged that his marriage was over and the only One way to take advantage of Abby's recent inheritance was to kill her before the divorce was finalized after sending her son out of the house.

James loaded and sawed off the old shotgun and waited patiently for his unsuspecting wife to come into the kitchen and fired. killing her instantly after he staged the scene to make it look like he had been cleaning the gun in 1999 James Niebauer was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 27 years in prison for the victim's brother, Lee Sansum, it was the end of a long fight for justice but not the end of the mystery. I still wonder why Chimney Barr could take my sister's life after being married to her for all those years and do it not in an angry way but in a care

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y planned way and I still wonder how he could do that, although some research homicides can go on for years without interruption, justice has a long memory, the advancement of forensic technology can heat up an otherwise cold case Houston, Texas, July 25, 1987.

In the afternoon, a team road worker working along a country road prepared to finish finishing his day's work without warning a passing motorist suddenly opened fire one of the workers was wounded in the leg a co-worker was driving the man in the number of license of the truck as the vehicle sped away. The information was quickly called to the Harris County Sheriff's Office within a few hours, Detective Marcel Dione had traced the tag to a car dealership owned by a man. named Michael Neal. Police 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 was missing. around um, here's Marco, the

detectives

asked him about her current whereabouts, but she was incoherent and seemed unable to answer any questions.

Tracy Joe appeared to have received an injection or taken some type of drug and I tried to locate her. to tell me where Michael Neal was because he was the one she was looking for. The officer is asked to look around near Tracy Joe. The detective found a bag containing a powdery substance. Hey, detective room. The officer discovered a makeshift lab used to make methamphetamine, a potent form of speed is your stuff in this other room, although Tracy Joe claimed to know nothing about it, she was placed under arrest. Bobby Neal Michael Neal's brother and co-owner, the car dealership was also arrested on drug charges now with drug charges pending.

Tracy Joe was willing to talk to the police about Michael Neal and we're trying to take care of you. She said that she and Michael were romantically involved. I really don't believe the two actually shared a house, although she didn't know that. where she was currently she told police that he was the man who had shot the highway worker who was traveling in her truck. He was shooting a gun at random targets. She tought thatIt would be fun to shoot the worker. Tracy Joe didn't know what his intention was. 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 and she told me she would get it. She came back to me and helped me with the case, but she went over a month without a word from the witness and then on September 9, Tracy Joe's mother, Virginia Shine, came to talk to the police. She hadn't heard from her daughter in almost three weeks. 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 prime suspect in a random drive-by shooting that left a highway worker lucky to be alive, though Neil's girlfriend, Tracy Joe Shine , he 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 and a woman who wished to remain anonymous claimed She had information about a man who had murdered his girlfriend in his home, the girl had supposedly been placed in a 55 gallon drum of muriatic acid and had been dismembered just before that, the informant began to tell me the names involved and she named Michael Neal and Tracy.

Informant Joe Shine heard rumors that the victim's remains had been transported to Michael Neal's car lot in a refrigerator after remaining at his house for three days. Investigators obtained a warrant to search the car dealership's premises, even though Michael Neal was not at work. Harris County authorities began searching the area to the side of the building. I 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 there was enough debris still attached to its surfaces, including what appeared to be a small fragment of meat that investigators picked up. the sample and sent it to the laboratory for analysis in 1987.

DNA testing was in its infancy and required large samples, with such a small sample to work with the examiners could only conclude that the DNA extracted from the refrigerator was human and that it had came from a woman, the process had consumed the entire sample, preventing researchers from conducting further testing; the discovery of a female human tissue; However, he supported the anonymous caller's statements that Tracy Joe Shine had been murdered and was seeking additional evidence to corroborate the story. Police searched Michael Neal's bedroom. where Tracy Joe's body had supposedly been for three days, if Tracy Joe had been murdered there, police and forensic technicians could find no evidence to prove anyone found anything.

Michael Neal's whereabouts also remained a mystery in November 1987, four months after investigators in Tracy Joe's disappearance got a break. Michael Neal had been located in San Antonio and was in police custody for shooting a man in Michael, through his attorney, declined to comment on the whereabouts of Tracy Joe Shine, although investigators believed he was involved in her disappearance, lacking physical evidence. If you put a case like this in front of a jury and the jury says, well, you know what happens if we convict this guy and then Tracy Joe shows up? And it is very difficult, when someone disappears, to assume that this person is dead, the instigators would do it.

They had to find another way to present their case, they interviewed dozens of inmates serving time and Michael Neal hoped 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 to find some sign of the missing. The woman would turn up, but the investigation into Tracy Joe Shine's disappearance went cold and would stay that way for 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 evaluating old files that came across the Tracy Joe Shine case report, they agreed that their Disappearance demanded a closer look, and although more than a decade had passed, Detective Roger Wedgworth believed the passage of time could benefit him.

People who get divorced, wives are more likely to talk about an ex. husband than they are to talk about a current husband people no longer feel threatened by individuals, they could be imprisoned in something like that, so time helps us know how you are. One of the people softened by time was Michael Neal's brother Bobby, who had been imprisoned. 12 years earlier, for manufacturing methamphetamine, he was approaching his parole hearing and now he was willing to tell what he knew. Regardless of what Bobby said, when Tracy Joe disappeared, he had gone to his brother's house. Thanks, he found Michael in the garage trying it. loading a taped-up refrigerator into his truck, where he wants to place it in the truck.

The place was trashed and Michael was burning incense to cover the smell. Bobby helped his brother put the refrigerator in the truck, then they drove it to the car dealership and unloaded it. is what happened to him Bobby said he had no idea what was inside, although he was being cooperative, the investigators felt that he had not told him everything, we felt that Bobby had seen his body in the refrigerator and we wanted him to tell us and We were sorry because he was incarcerated at the time and we could possibly pressure him to tell the truth, but the suspect's brother was not talking, but the information he provided focused the investigation once again on the refrigerator and, fortunately, on Detective Marcel Dione, who He had worked on the case 12 years earlier and had ensured that the evidence remained in police custody.

I don't know how many times everyone tried to get me to release that refrigerator so they could get it out of our property room and I wouldn't let go. Because I knew that was the only real evidence we had after dismantling the appliance, the technicians went to work looking for foreign evidence, they found and collected several previously undetected biological samples, although the investigators had no known samples from Tracy Joe. to compare them. The evidence was sent to the Jean Screen DNA testing laboratory that opened a year after Tracy Joe disappeared, but the police-owned room where the refrigerator had been for 12 years was not climate controlled.

Forensic scientist William Watson was not optimistic. I didn't believe that. 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 conventional DNA testing; however, a new procedure was developed. In development, a technique called mitochondrial DNA sequencing analyzes a specific strand of DNA in the cell nucleus that has been passed unchanged from mother to child. Potentially, examiners could determine whether the last evidence recovered from the refrigerator came from Virginia's biological son. type of case for this type of testing because all other types of testing had been exhausted and our backs 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, so if we didn't get a mitochondrial DNA profile we weren't going to have anything at all, the procedure was a success, the examiners compared the profile generated in the refrigerator with those of Tracy.

Joe's mother, Virginia Shine, manages to constitute the victim's deceased body after 12 years of waiting. Advanced forensic technology had provided investigators with evidence that Tracy Joe Shine had been murdered. That was a nice turn on January 1, 2000. Michael Neal, jailed on unrelated charges, faced the evidence. who confirmed that Tracy Joe's body had been in his refrigerator when he faced the death penalty, confessed to the murder and said that after learning that Tracy Joe was cooperating with police and the investigation into the shooting of factory workers road, his anger became deadly and he strangled her to death for three days.

He then 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, when tackling a crime, investigators faced two scenarios: a lack of leads that fit the suspect. or the lack of suspects who 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 made their way to the master bedroom, They came across a gruesome discovery. The home's current owner, Sarah Dean, 39, lay dead on the floor after receiving the frantic 9-1-1 call.

Officers from the Fort Collins Police Department responded to the scene, there, in the second-floor bedroom, they found the victim with a tightly coiled telephone cord. around her neck Sarah Dean had also been sexually assaulted, just a spilled glass of water found near her body suggested she had been taken by surprise, they located debris that had been traced from the outside, the window was open for investigators, this marked the probable entry of the Killer. 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 for me. The samples were collected and preserved as evidence while police processed the outside of the crime scene. At the house 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. Topsy, 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. Blood typing analysis confirmed that it matched all samples collected from the crime scene. had originated from an individual the police turned 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 could find a way to link all the evidence to a suspect.

Sarah Dean's killer would remain a Free 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 with whom to link it using photographs taken at the scene. Investigators worked 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 overwhelming amount of physical evidence to prove the murder.

Lt. Jim Broderick needed to find a way to identify the suspect. I guess there was a kind of sense of trust 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 checked the victim's name in the authorities' database. Sarah Dean's name had recently been entered into the system. She had filed a police report ten days before she was murdered, she reportedly said. Sarah called the police after returning. One night, she came home late and 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. Due to the identity of the thief, the investigation quickly went cold for investigators. The fetishistic aspects of the robbery and the sexual nature of the homicide made it easy to connect the two crimes. Lt. Broderick speculated that the robbery may have been a sort of dress rehearsal for the young suspect. he knew that the general layout of the househe may even have known, 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 despite evidence suggesting the crime of a The Strangest Investigators They 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. Foreign police said he and Sarah had recently become 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 fiancee. Police collected blood samples. Serological tests later confirmed that he was not the killer. In the following months, hundreds of local residents, including known sex offenders, were brought in for questioning. Everyone was asked to submit blood samples, of which there were between three and four hundred people who actually had blood samples taken and compared to the evidence at the scene, but no one was being matched in the search for the Sarah Dean's killer turned up nothing then, in September 1989, a month after the homicide, Fort Collins police discovered a clue, a car that had recently been reported stolen was found abandoned on the side of the road inside the The officer He picked up a baseball cap with the initials DT Junior written on the brim.

The foreign teenagers had stolen the car. Robbery detectives contacted area high schools and looked for students with those initials. Thanks for coming. Yes, they found a sixteen-year-old Douglas Thames Jr.. They brought him in for questioning when they asked him about his hat, he claimed that he had lent it to some friends of his a few weeks earlier and never got it back. He's fine, he's fine, with his mother present. Thames denied stealing the car within hours. The police had located the two. The young men not only admitted to stealing the car, 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 electronic items and other property.

Police found a red and blue sports bag like the one reported stolen by Sarah Dean ten days before her murder, officers confronted the teens with evidence linking them to the homicide, the children denied any knowledge of it and They declined to release the names of other teens involved in the robberies. Police collected blood and palm samples. footprints but none matched the evidence recovered from the crime scene to investigators the setback was frustrating over the course of the next four or five years nothing just came in I mean there are good leads based on people arrested in other jurisdictions for similar crimes , but you I know that you do the serological tests and they simply do not match our crime scene six years after Sarah Dean was found brutally murdered in her home, the police were no closer to finding her killer in 1995, it had been six years since 39 years old Sarah Dean 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 suspect, the case was had stopped, but in July 1995 all that 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 remembering the details of the robbery and murder of Sarah Dean called the police Lieutenant Broderick responded hope

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y to the call that this could be the breakup that eluded the authorities for years in there, yes, that was when he saw that the underwear matched the description of which Sarah Dean had reported stolen ten days before her murder, the detective collected the items and sent them to the Colorado Bureau.

Investigation, his laboratory agent, examiner Ted Devalis, located and extracted biological evidence of several of the items, even though the samples had remained for six years in an air duct in the furnace. Agent Dávalos was confident that new DNA technology would allow him to obtain valuable evidence that would have been concerned with doing the old 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.

Devallis was able to develop a genetic profile of the suspect from evidence recovered from the underwear when compared to biological evidence recovered from the Sarah Dean crime scene. Devalis 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 scrambled to find out who had lived there at the time of the murder and we hoped they had some documentation. Fortunately, the owner kept meticulous records and told the police that in August 1989. The house was rented to a family who had some teenage children.

One was named Douglas Thames Jr., the teenager who had provided information to investigators six years earlier. A check of state records revealed that Douglas Thames Jr., now 22, lived several hundred miles away in Grand Junction Colorado Foreign Court Order 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. He was brought in for questioning after several hours of Thames failing to cooperate with police. Douglas was convinced that he was hiding something. Investigators held hands with friends and collected blood samples before releasing the suspect after developing a DNA profile from known blood samples from Douglas Thames Junior.

Agent Dávalos compared it to the evidence found at the crime scene and in the underwear recovered from the oven. all samples matched Fort Collins police had found Sarah Dean's killer police returned to Grand Junction this time with an arrest warrant we have the right to speak to a lawyer Douglas Thames Jr was arrested and charged with the murder of police Sarah Dean in 1989 I think 10 days after breaking into Sarah Dean's house, the 16-year-old came crawling back through the open second-floor bathroom window. Thames caught his victim completely off guard. Sarah Dean probably never knew what hit her for the first-degree murder of Douglas Thames Jr.

He was sentenced to life in prison when a homicide investigation goes unsolved. Some murderers feel confident leaving their deeds behind them armed with patience and the latest forensic technology. Investigators can heat up a cold case and find justice for the unforgettable. Thank you.