julie estes killer, investigators were convinced they d found him. he was serving time in prison for a similar crime committed 30 miles away. his name was james elmen. elmen was the worst of the worst. we talk about he s the poster child of antisocial. it s a clue when the public defenders are afraid of him, when the doctors are afraid of him, when the people at the medical treatment facility are afraid of him. i was convinced if james elmen hit the streets of jacksonville again, women were going to start dying again, and i wanted to make sure that those cold case detectives had everything that they had to make sure that we could make the case. but investigators wanted to be sure elmen was responsible for julie estes murder. why? because if he wasn t, julie s
was capable of. she did a quick drive to the post office, where he said he wanted to go. before they got there, the man pulled a knife, forced her to drive to an isolated field and sexually assaulted her. he then forced her to drive away. she was sure he was going to kill her because she could identify him, but then she saw the only chance to escape, a police officer directing traffic. what are you doing? drop the knife! the man was identified as james elmen. he was convicted for the crime and was currently serving a 22-year sentence in a nearby prison. and cold case investigators learned another startling coincidence.
male. one was julie s dna. the other was the dna of the killer. they were able to identify that dna profile as the exact match to james elmen. we were all ecstatic. i mean, it was an unbelievable feeling. and that s the reward of cold case, when you have that piece that you never had before and you re able just to put that one thing together, and, you know, you ve got the entire case. investigators confronted elmen in prison with the evidence. and i m telling you that your dna, that your semen, is in the murder scene of this murdered girl. i m telling you i wasn t there. i don t know anything about this girl. if you re not there, how does james elmen s semen get in the damn crime scene? that s one of those things that you could deny until the cows come home. with technology the way it is today, there s no getting around it. james elmen is a monster that now sits behind bars. i always knew that there was going to be a day that they were going to say, we got it. this ca
elmen had a close connection to the 10-year-old girl found hanging in the tree near julie s store two months before julie s murder. the 10-year-old was a half-sister of elmen. investigators now wanted to test the biological evidence collected from julie s rape test kit to see whether james elmen was her killer, but there was a risk. the test would consume all of the evidence. unfortunately, sometimes you have to make a choice. you might have to run the entire bit of sample. but at the time, you re thinking this is the best technology available. investigators decided the gamble was worth it. they consumed all of the semen that was contained in those slides trying to get results, results that, unfortunately, never showed who the killer was. this was a devastating setback. it s just shocking. it feels like you re hit with a ton of bricks. then you ve got to start over. it s like going starting from
scratch again. but investigators refused to give up. elmen has a rough history, and people around james elmen tend to die. unfortunately, if elmen was julie s killer, there was no longer any dna to prove it.