good afternoon and welcome to true crime mysteries
if you're new the channel hello and welcome and if you're returning welcome back today
we're discussing four cold cases that were solved recently with new dna evidence let's get into it
on april 24th 1980 in sacramento california a horrible discovery was made robin brooks had
missed her shift at the donut shop she worked at the 20 year old had recently moved to the
area from new york and worked two jobs to afford her new apartment she was last seen the previous
evening she worked a late shift at the donut shop and finished at midnight she said goodbye
to her co-worker and left her apartment was only around the corner from the shop and should have
only taken her minutes to get home the next day robin failed to show up for 4pm shift and her
co-workers found that unusual robin was incredibly dependable and it wasn't like her to not show up
a friend walked over to apartment and knocked in the door several times with no answer
she knew something was wrong she went back to the shop and got another co-worker and they
forced their way into the apartment robin was found in her bedroom her friends described what
they saw that day she had been stabbed several times and her killer had punctured her waterbed
making for an even more traumatic scene the police were called who also determined that
she'd been sexually assaulted robin didn't have a car and she only recently moved to the apartment
since it was closer to her job there were no immediate suspects robin didn't have a boyfriend
or anyone around her that may hurt her none of her neighbors reported any disturbances that evening
but it would have been quite late when the attack occurred the co-worker that had seen her the
previous evening remembered when robin was telling her that she had washed all of her bedding before
her shift and it was unfair that she had to make her bed before being able to go to bed so late
officers noted that robin's bed was not made at the crime scene leading them to believe
that her killer likely attacked her soon after she arrived home her sister stated that she had been
told by some friends that robin might have had a stalker in the days leading up to her murder robin
had complained to friends that a customer at work had been bothering her officers had not been able
to locate that man for questioning at the crime scene officers were able to recover some evidence
most notable was dna evidence found at the scene a sample of blood determined not to belong to
the victim was discovered and it appeared that the killer had cut himself during the attack
there were also fingerprints on the windowsill indicating that's how the killer got in and out
of the apartment though despite a thorough investigation the case eventually went cold
a profile for the dna evidence was generated years later in 2004 but never came up as a
match in state databases or federal databases it did however link to a second victim that had been
attacked and assaulted three weeks before robin's murder in 2017 parabon nanolabs created a genetic
snapshot of the suspect they used the genetic markers to make an estimation of what the suspect
might look like but the real break in the case came in 2020 when the dna was approved
for funding for genetic genealogy testing and after four decades they had a match
philip wilson was arrested in april 2020 and was charged with the murder of robin brooks the now
73 year old would have been 30 at the time of the murder and law enforcement discovered
that he lived near robin's apartment complex and had been a regular at the donut shop we
never forget about the victims in fact in many respects that's all we think about our victims
sometimes these cases take a little bit longer to solve than others
but none of them are forgotten none of them are put on the shelf forever and this although is
the latest case i can promise you will not be the last these are cases that even challenge your hope
hope that someday it may be solved someday that you can bring justice for those families
what does that cold case rape murder do to that family member those family members of that victim
day after day year after year and in some cases decade after decade
undoubtedly they haunt them they also consume their lives philip wilson now stands
charged in a felony complaint in sacramento county with the rape murder of robin brooks
he had never been a suspect and didn't have any run-ins with the law after robin had been murdered
while in the trial he maintained his innocence despite extensive evidence his lawyer argued
that they had a consensual encounter and that the blood evidence was from a workplace injury
the other sexual assault case that wilson's dna was linked to could not be brought into
this trial and he cannot be charged as the statute of limitations has expired on that case
initially the jury was hung on the conviction but on march 9th 2022 they came back with
a unanimous guilty verdict robin's sister maria eric said after the verdict was read
i feel like i can go on with my life now because i think it absorbed a piece of who i was
wilson's defense attorney has indicated that they will likely appeal the conviction
but as of this reporting they have not sentencing is set for sometime in april
it was a sunday afternoon on november 6 1983 when 11 year old laura ann weiser was walking
home from a friend's house in fort pierce florida her parents noticed that she was
late coming home they called the friend that laura had been with and discovered that laura
had left her friend's house hours ago they did a quick search of the area and when they
couldn't find laura they went to the st lucie county sheriff's office to report her missing
officers didn't take the disappearance of the little girl seriously a large-scale search by
law enforcement was never undertaken but they did put out a bolo be on the lookout sheet for her
a deputy came forward james howard harrison saying that he saw the girl walking near a gas station
harrison had been on patrol that day she went missing and it had been in his area patrol he
gave the estimated time he saw her and claimed to have continued his patrol without talking to her
laura ann was small for her age but she was described as feisty and outspoken her
family claimed she never would have gotten in a vehicle with a stranger and that she was very
street smart there was disappointment that the local authorities didn't do more to find laura
ann and three days later her body was found in a citrus grove less than 600 yards from her home
the medical examiner confirmed that she'd been murdered the day she'd been reported missing
her cause of death was strangulation and she had been sexually assaulted
two men that worked in the citrus grove had discovered her body when they called the
police it was james harrison who arrived first on the scene the men said that harrison took
brief statements and dismissed the men no one from the stcso ever followed up with the men
harrison was alone at the crime scene for 20 minutes before other officers joined him
the investigation had been brief no suspects were ever identified
and the case was quickly filed away not revisited for nearly four decades
in 2020 the saint lucy's county sheriff's office established a dedicated cold case squad
and it was laura ann's cold case that was selected for the team to reinvestigate
detective paul taylor was in charge of the investigation i mean i can tell you
the story of how that picture came to be but there is a picture of her in my office
go ahead i think it's important so okay so that picture hangs above my desk every day so basically
i lost my only child to suicide five years ago there had been a while after he died that i i
had no dreams of him and it was it used to bother me and it upset my wife that she wasn't having
dreams of him so one night i had a dream of my son and i heard him and he always called me pappy
and i i heard him i'm walking somewhere and i hear him yelling my name and i'm looking around i don't
see him and finally i see him coming up to me and he's he's screaming at me and he's like pappy i
found her and i'm like what are you talking about he said he gets right in my face and he says i
found her and i'm like who are you talking about and i looked over and i saw laura standing there
and she just looked at me and said one word to me or one one sentence to me and she said keep
digging and i woke up so the picture when i got into my office the next day i pulled a picture
of her out she's standing in front of this little wall she's just a little bitty girl
and i wrote on it keep digging laura ann and stuck it on my wall and it's been there ever since
early on it was discovered that there were many holes in the initial investigation
detective taylor interviewed one of the men who had initially discovered laura's body
and had been shocked that he was the first officer besides deputy harrison to talk to him
the man remembered that day vividly and the crime scene as he had explained that it had
been a deeply traumatic discovery he explained what he saw that day with crystal clear details
but detective taylor had been shocked to realize that it didn't match what was
in the file the mana told him that harrison had asked the two men to leave which they thought had
been strange and what had been more strange was that no one else wanted to talk to them further
for the first time there seemed to be a suspect in the murder of laura ann
and was one of their own detective harrison was also a preacher in the region just to give you
a little history about two and a half years ago i made the decision to start a cold case squad
detective paul taylor was picked as a person to lead that squad and his job every day is to
look through these cold cases and determine what else we can do to bring closure to these cases
he picked this case in particular because it was a child and if you look at her picture back
there 11 year old 11 year old beautiful girl who was brutally raped murdered left in a drainage
ditch in western st lucie county in 1983. as a parent this case was easy for him to be vested in
and as this case progressed there are some other turns to this case that really has shocked us
all to our core that being the rest of a former deputy so based on information that was obtained
during this investigation of the cold case detectives have named former deputy james
howard harrison as the only probable suspect in the case all right and just pay attention to how
i worded that the only probable suspect in this case the sheriff's office is unable to pursue
charges against mr harrison due to his death in 2008. we have established probable cause
as you know probable cause is what we need to make an arrest but we have established
probable cause to determine that harrison abducted sexually assaulted and murdered
the juvenile victim and later altered the crime scene by placing the victim in a drainage stitch
in an attempt to destroy physical evidence taylor discovered that five months after laura's murder
harrison was let go at the sheriff's office several accusations had come forward that harrison
had molested several young girls in his church harrison also had complaints brought forward
from within the sheriff's office as coworkers felt he'd been inappropriate with young women
while conducting his duties as a deputy detective taylor uncovered several definitive instances
where harrison directly tampered with evidence moved things in the crime scene and had hindered
the investigation harrison was never charged he was let go from his job and kicked out of
his church so he and his family picked up and moved harrison actually moved a lot working in
law enforcement in 10 separate agencies within florida orange hernando osceola edgewood glades
and okeechobee counties because he was never formally charged he was allowed to just start
over in a new county using both the church and his uniform to maintain access to potential victims
james howard harrison died in 2008 and in 2020 his body was exhumed for dna collection
dna collected from the crime scene had been poorly stored and conditions had
degraded the sample and they wouldn't be able to get a definitive 100 match
however they are certain that harrison is responsible for the murder of laura ann
weiser based on witness statements the tampering of evidence and the history of sexual assaults of
little girls the st lucie county sheriff's office have stated that they are certain
that harrison killed laura ann they've also input his dna into federal and state databases and his
dna is being tested in several other cold cases in florida to determine how many other victims he had
it was on march 20th 1976 when elizabeth anne wilson went missing from her place of work
mid-shift the 45 year old mother was working an overnight shift as a spinner at a textiles factory
in chester south carolina halfway through her shift and last seen at the cafeteria around 3 45
am a co-worker said she saw her resume work around 4 am and didn't notice anything unusual not long
after a security guard thought he saw elizabeth ann in a vehicle a green and white chevrolet
belonging to a manager of the plant and allow the vehicle out of the facility this wasn't unusual
the manager had been known to drive employees that were sick or if there was an emergency
and either took people home or to the hospital however it hadn't been the manager driving when
he finished his shift he noticed that his car was missing and reported it as stolen to the police
at that time it was noticed that elizabeth ann was missing
around 7am a motorist noticed an abandoned vehicle on the highway he saw what he believed
to be a body under the car and went straight to the home of a nearby sheriff's deputy they
went back to the vehicle together and confirmed it was a deceased half-clothed woman underneath
initially it had been thought that she'd been hit by a car but an autopsy revealed she had been
strangled to death severely beaten and sexually assaulted it had been the second vicious attack in
the area that week and there was concern that the crimes had been in the work of a serial predator
but it was later determined that the attacks were either a coincidence or a copycat
elizabeth ann was confirmed as a victim but no one could figure out what had happened
the security guard hadn't gotten a good look at the driver the night that she'd gone missing
there had been no obvious signs of distress law enforcement had interviewed several suspects but
all were cleared she had been a widow her husband had died a little bit before her
and her two daughters were grown married and had families of their own the state offered a five
thousand dollar reward for any information that led to an arrest but nothing solid came of it
dna found at the scene was input into federal and state databases and nothing came of it for years
until 2020 when they finally got a match from a recent convicted felon
charles eugene coleman now 66 years old had been convicted of pointing and threatening a weapon
he was required to submit dna at the time of his arrest which connected him to the murder from
1976. coleman had an extensive criminal history which included a 12-year prison sentence for
assault and battery in 1977 his other convictions were assault and battery with intent to kill
larceny and other minor felonies he was charged with the murder of elizabeth ann howell wilson
in 2020 and in 2022 he entered an alfred plea meaning he would not accept guilt but acknowledged
there was sufficient evidence to convict him and would accept the punishment south carolina law
stated that he needed to be sentenced based on the laws in 1976 which gives him the option to
be eligible for parole in nine years the sexual assault charges were dropped as part of the plea
already told the jury and i will tell them again that you are presumed innocent of this
charge i will tell them that state is required to prove your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt
he's already served 16 months and will be eligible for parole in 2029 wilson's daughter spoke after
the trial expressing relief that there was some justice in her mother's brutal murder
it'll be better it's over it's over now i was killed didn't know who do nobody knows what
that's like because they walk that walk well that is it for this video as always thank you so much
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you