in sleepy terre haute indiana the shocking murder made headlines
19 year old pamela milam was found by her father stuffed in the trunk of her
own car tied up and strangled by a murder suspect who eluded police for 47 years
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i'm bad at keeping a regular schedule today we are discussing the cold case of pamela milam
pamela milam was a 19 year old student studying at indiana state university
pamela inspired by those who had taught her was working towards becoming an english teacher
on september 15 1972 isu was having their rush week and pamela had been a member of the sigma
kappa sorority she told some of her friends that she had wanted to move her car and she
left the homestead hall pamela said she would only be a few minutes but never returned pamela
didn't live on campus and she commuted to school daily from her childhood home she shared with her
younger sister and parents no one at the sorority party thought anything was suspicious when pamela
didn't return they'd assumed she had gone home the next morning pamela didn't show up for work
and this concerned her family it was very unlike pam to be so irresponsible on september 16th two
of pam's friends spotted her 1964 pontiac le mans in a parking lot about a block away from where it
had been the previous day they could see pam's glasses in the vehicle the girls called pam's
house and her father and sister sheila decided to bring a spare set of keys to check out the car
when her father popped the trunk what he saw would haunt him for the rest of his life
pamela had been stuffed inside the trunk of her vehicle her hands were tied behind
her back and she had been gagged and there was tape over her mouth she had rope around her neck
which was the same product used to bind her hands the thin white rope appeared to be clothing line
she had leaves and dirt on her body and caught in the layers of her pantyhose and pants
there were no witnesses but the police did a thorough investigation the lead investigator
insisted on the collection of soil and trace evidence that at the time there had been no
way of testing but he believed that science would one day catch up and it may be useful
dna was collected from pam's blouse with no witnesses or enemies the case went cold
authorities believe that a man who had been arrested seven weeks after pamela's murder
had been responsible he had been arrested in connection to several assaults on campus
however police were never able to link robert wayne austin to pamela no one knew at the time
that all that evidence that had been collected from the initial crime scene would eventually come
to light but at the time it would be tucked away in the back of a storage room waiting
in 2008 newly appointed terre haute police chief sean keane handed out coal cases to each of his
detectives keane felt it was unfair that he didn't have a case so he assigned himself the unsolved
murder of pamela milam keen said that as soon as he opened the file he couldn't put it down
he brought it home and irritated his wife by spreading the crime scene photos in their
living room he tested the dna found at the scene and tested against the lead suspect
robert wayne austin but was quickly able to eliminate him it wasn't a match he worked the
case for 11 years manually removing hundreds of suspects pamela's parents mourned differently
they unfortunately passed before any breaks in the case were ever discovered in 2018 keane made
a decision that would either make or keep the case cold forever he had sent the last usable sample of
dna to parabon nano labs the virginia-based lab that was known for using dna from companies like
23andme and ancestry.com to reverse engineer family trees this company was most notable in
identifying the golden state killer john d miller who murdered april marie tinsley and
william talbot who was arrested in connection to the murders of jay cooke and tanya von kuhlenberg
parabond was able to connect the dna to a distant female cousin they would have never
been able to solve this crime until as the chief said technology caught up with it they mapped
out additional family members and could begin narrowing a suspect down from the family tree
based on the results king conducted interviews and narrowed it down to a single suspect jeffrey
hand a nearly 50-year-old cold case is solved terre haute police have identified the man
they say killed indiana state university student pamela milam police chief sean keane announced
the break today he says a dna sample from the son of jeffrey lynn lin hand was used to prove
the hand that killed milam in 17 1972. keane was disappointed to learn that han had already died
but used a reverse paternity dna test to confirm that hand had killed pamela
jeffrey hand had been 23 at the time of pamela's murder han didn't live in terre haute but he had
lived there some years past in 1972 hannah had been working for a chicago-based record company
delivering records to stores throughout illinois and indiana he was around the age of university
goers he was familiar with the area which may have contributed to how he navigated the campus
unnoticed he was young had light hair soft voice features he didn't look dangerous less
than a year after pam's death handed picked up two hitchhikers jeffrey thomas and his new wife
the couple were hitchhiking back after visiting friends in chicago hand had picked them up just
south of terre haute and on the drive he told the couple he needed to stop at his sister's house
to see about getting some money hand pulled over drawing a pistol and he demanded money from the
couple the couple showed them they didn't have any money which i mean may have explained why they had
been hitchhiking hand forced them into a grain bin and told them he was holding them for ransom
after waiting for a bit hand took thomas out of his wife's site they were gone for a while and
while they'd been gone she was able to escape the bin and run to a nearby home for help when police
arrived they were able to arrest hand quickly hand also led them to thomas's lifeless body
which had been discarded in a weedy area thomas's autopsy revealed he'd been killed by a gunshot
wound to the head but had also been stabbed in the chest eight times and had his throat slit
his hands had also been tied behind his back much like pam's had been hand never served time
for the slaying of jeffrey thomas at his trial he was found not guilty by reason of insanity
for both the murder and the kidnapping charges he was however committed to a state reformatory for
two years hand's last encounter with the law was in january 1978 in a mall parking lot an off-duty
deputy was in the right place at the right time he witnessed a man attempting to abduct a woman
he yelled out at which point han ran the deputy called for backup and pursued
hand shot at the officer injuring him the fire was returned and hand was fatally shot as he
ran away hand died as a result of his injuries in 1978 he was 29 at the time of his death many
of us as we got older thought we would would die before we ever learned who had killed our
sister pamela's family was relieved to hear that hand had not lived a full life however
it was bittersweet knowing that he would never face justice for the years he stole from them
they were grateful that he had been stopped before more young women could have been harmed
i hope his life of crime was a short one although given that he had already established a pattern
in preference there may be more discoveries linking him to more crimes in the future
she was a joy to be around and that's what we miss we miss not having her there for family i family
get togethers i miss that my children and grandchildren will never ever get to meet
someone who would have been a terrific aunt to them
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