right now, by today s standard, physical evidence is one of your top factors in reviewing a case. it s very significant, very important. they make the case. with no leads, no evidence and no suspects, the trail of julie estes killer turned cold. julie s family started to believe her murder would never be solved. after a couple of years, we just gave up. i said, well, we re up here and they re down there. nobody cares. the case always bugged me. she went missing on my watch, and it bugged me. i mean, every time i drove by that store, i thought of her. after a few years, patrolman frank mackesy was promoted to chief of detectives with the power to recommend cases to the cold case unit. mackesy always had a strong desire to solve this case. this is a case that stuck with him, stuck in his mind through
his whole career. so, when the cold case unit got involved, they broadened their search. they looked at every sexually motivated crime in the region and got a break. just two months after julie estes murder, 30 miles away, in another jurisdiction, there had been another convenience store crime, almost identical to julie s, except, in this case, the victim survived. a 19-year-old convenience store worker, carla nobles, had just closed the store and given a ride to a young man she met in the parking lot. sure, get in. thanks. she voluntarily let him in the car, having no idea what he 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
Transcripts for CNN Forensic Files 20140314 06:53:45 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
later that morning, four miles from the convenience store, police found julie s car in the woods stuck in mud. the key was still in the ignition. one of our helicopters spotted that blue camaro, not a long distance away, but in a wooded area that s known for vehicles dumped or parked, whatever, out there. they saw what they perceived to be drag marks leading away from the vehicle. and then they followed the drag marks. a few hundred feet from the car, under some cardboard, was julie s body. julie s body was found with her arms tied behind her back with her very own shoelaces. her shirt was pulled up with her breasts exposed. her pants and panties were pulled down to her socks. the details of the crime just really go right through you. they make you realize how, you know, how much she really went through.
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. 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.