[music playing]
STEVE HINKLE: The Oregon State Police
received a call of a-- what they called a walk-away
from Fairview Training Center.
It was a mental health facility.
When the state police responded, they
learned that it was Janie Landers, an 18-year-old female
with developmental disabilities, that had
walked away from the facility.
PAIGE CLARKSON: Janie was 18 years old,
but she didn't look 18.
Janie was about 5' 1", I think somewhere around 90 pounds
dripping wet, and the developmental age
of about an eight-year-old.
NARRATOR: Staff members tell police
that 18-year-old Janie has been missing for several hours.
STEVE HINKLE: Detectives start gathering information.
They interviewed her teacher first.
And they found out that Janie was last seen in her classroom
and that Bill Graf, her counselor, he
had come in and spoken with her while she
was in class for a short while.
And a short time later, she stormed out of the classroom.
And the teacher said that she saw Janie walking
from the classroom towards Kozer Cottage, which was the housing
unit where she lived.
But Janie didn't arrive at Kozer Cottage
where she was supposed to, and then they listed her as AWOL.
The staff was all talking about it up until end of shift.
And we hadn't heard any word other than, nope,
they haven't found her yet.
Janie was last seen right before 2 o'clock PM.
I worked at Fairview for approximately 3 and 1/2 years.
I was a psychiatric aide.
The day that Janie disappeared, it
was just as normal as could be.
When I turned a corner close to the main driveway
that I went up every day, I saw this girl.
And I recognized her as a resident.
I did not know her name, but I had seen her on campus.
I see a car that's parked on the shoulder and a gentleman
walking in front of my car.
I thought, I don't recognize him.
This is kind of fishy.
Why would that man be out of his car?
What is he even doing getting close to her?
And I thought, should I pick her up, or should I not?
I wanted to, but there were strict rules against it.
So I quickly went up to my cottage and called security.
Security went down and checked.
They didn't find anyone.
Witness information came into play.
And they started figuring out that was most likely Janie.
Detectives get a description of the individual
that Janie was talking to.
LEONA WASE: He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans.
He was maybe 35, 40.
He had a big potbelly, about 5' 8" or 5' 10".
He needed a haircut.
It was kind of shaggy.
She also gave her information about the vehicle.
LEONA WASE: It was a gold-color sedan, four door.
STEVE HINKLE: Now we have more of a possibility
of an abduction.
She didn't just walk away.
She was talking to somebody.
Fairview had hundreds of employees,
and there was no restricted access to the facility.
So it could have literally been anyone.
A landowner was checking his field and the perimeter
of his property and discovered the body
of a young female discarded at the edge of a farm field right
off the highway.
PAIGE CLARKSON: Authorities knew they had one missing person.
They knew that this was probably Janie.
STEVE HINKLE: When she's first discovered,
she's lying face down in the bushes.
And as they roll her, she's got an arm kind of up by her face.
There was a lot of blood coming from some stab
wounds on her neck area.
NARRATOR: The victim is 18-year-old Janie Landers.
STEVE HINKLE: There wasn't a lot of evidence.
There's blood there.
There was no signs of a struggle.
It was pretty clear that the body
was just dumped in the bushes.
PAIGE CLARKSON: She had been stabbed somewhere else.
And she had fought for her life.
STEVE HINKLE: Detectives canvassed the area
and talked to the homeowners in the immediate vicinity,
but they didn't find anything.
[phone ringing]
JOYCE CALDWELL: When my dad got the call about Janie,
he had distress in his voice.
And then he tells us, Janie's body was found.
It looked like she had been murdered.
I didn't want to believe that they
found her dumped somewhere.
STEVE HINKLE: In the autopsy, one of the things that
was determined was that her stomach contents were
consistent with what was served at the noon meal at Fairview
on March 9.
That information would suggest that she was killed shortly
after she was last seen.
In 1979, when we want to broadcast information
to the public, we are going through the newspaper,
primarily.
"The Statesman Journal" was where we would
generate leads and tips from.
PAIGE CLARKSON: Leona was descriptive enough
that it gave detectives confidence to try
to call in a sketch artist.
STEVE HINKLE: There was newspaper articles about Janie
being missing, and the sketch of the suspect
was put in the paper.
Two women that worked at the food cart on Fairview
saw the article in the paper and the sketch of the man last seen
talking to Janie, recognized him as a man
that they had served at the food cart the day
she went missing on March 9.
We don't know who he was, but we know that he at least came,
and he had lunch there.
We didn't have a lot of other information to go on.
NARRATOR: Joyce hangs her last hope
of solving Janie's murder on the promise of new technology.
I talked to Detective Hinkle and a couple other officers.
I knew just from my own studies and watching TV
that the technology was better in 2015 than it was in 1979.
They had the ability to test her clothing
to see if anything was there.
Was there ability to match DNA?
FORENSIC EXPERT: I ended up collecting four isolated blood
stains from Janie Landers' shirt to send
to DNA that I thought might be transfers from the perpetrator.
If the perpetrator had picked her up
and had, say, a cut on his finger or hand,
and he had grabbed her and maybe put her over his shoulder,
that would be a location where his hand
would naturally go to her back.
NARRATOR: Nine months after Janie's shirt
is submitted for testing, the results come back.
STEVE HINKLE: I got a call from Jen telling
me that there was a CODIS hit.
And the suspect was Gerald Dunlap.
So I wanted to know, who the hell is Gerald Dunlap?
His DNA profile was in CODIS because he
was sentenced and was in Oregon state prison at some point.
NARRATOR: Gerald Dunlap is a convicted sex offender
first arrested in the 1960s.
PAIGE CLARKSON: Gerald Dunlap was sent to prison for 99 years
for the rape of a very young female victim in 1961
in the state of Tennessee.
He was paroled, however, in 1973.
He was only there for 12 years.
STEVE HINKLE: I was able to track down
a photograph taken of Gerald Dunlap in Tennessee
when he was paroled.
And that photograph matched the forensic sketch very closely.
So that confirmed that we were on the right track.
NARRATOR: After he's released from a Tennessee prison,
Dunlap is hired to work at Fairview Training Facility.
STEVE HINKLE: Dunlap worked in laundry.
Payroll records from Fairview show
that he was employed and working during the month of March
in 1979.
When we interviewed the coworkers and supervisors
in laundry, they all said that they worked a day shift,
and every single person had a break at 2:00 PM.
That's the point where Janie went missing.
One of the supervisors I interviewed in laundry
said that he ended up having to fire Gerald
because he had patted a female patient that
worked in laundry on the butt.
So that was another red flag in addition
to his prior rape offense from the '60s and then
the sexual assault case in the early '90s,
where he sexually assaulted his step-granddaughter.
That case ended him up in Oregon state prison.
PAIGE CLARKSON: What we were dealing
with was a serial rapist, somebody
who preyed upon young women.
JOYCE CALDWELL: The justice system failed.
By letting him out, the justice system
gave him a free card to go and harm another person
and eventually murder my sister.
STEVE HINKLE: When we got the photograph of him,
we did a double-blind photo lineup with the witnesses
that were still alive.
And they both picked Dunlap's photo out of that lineup.
LEONA WASE: When Detective Hinkle came to my home,
he said, I have some pictures here
that I'd like you to go through and see
if you can identify anyone.
I look through them.
This is the man that I saw there.
And he says, yeah, we got him.
NARRATOR: Janie's family finally knows who the killer is,
but justice comes too late.
Dunlap died in prison in 2002.
One moment, I'm feeling elated.
Yes, we have a match of DNA.
But yet he's deceased.
So right away, I'm thinking, we don't even
get to take him to court and find him
guilty of what he did to Janie.
PAIGE CLARKSON: I was disappointed
that Gerald Dunlap was dead.
I want 12 jurors to come in, and I want them to say that Gerald
Dunlap is guilty of this crime.