51 Years in the Dark: How DNA Pulled a Killer Out of a Cold Case and Into a Courtroom
Episode 6 min 12s

51 Years in the Dark: How DNA Pulled a Killer Out of a Cold Case and Into a Courtroom

A body dumped in a landfill in 1975, a victim who had no name for decades, and a suspect who allegedly spent over half a century collecting a dead man's pension, this is one of the most chilling cold case resolutions in recent memory. Investigators used forensic genealogy to identify the victim as William Reginald Sipfle and zeroed in on his stepdaughter Carol Ann Beall, now 79, as the woman prosecutors believe killed him and buried both the body and the truth for 51 years. This episode goes deep into the investigative trail, the forensic tools that made the breakthrough possible, and the haunting question of how someone lives an ordinary life while carrying a secret that dark for that long.

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