she was looking forward to her future as an air traffic controller. tough job, and especially for females. and she would have been good at it if she had had more time. quincy brown, the man found shot to death in the makdessis bedroom, had no history of violence. quincy had been in the navy for over 19 years. he was married. he had a child. he did not have any kind of criminal background. quincy brown worked with elise at the naval air base. everybody that we talked to that knew quincy brown, that didn t go with his character at all. it seemed to be completely in conflict with his character. but the facts were undeniable. a rape test kit on elise makdessi showed signs of sexual intercourse, and the biological evidence matched quincy brown s dna. a knife covered with elise s blood was found underneath brown s body.
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
and one of those hairs had the potential to be a gold mine of evidence. the first hair that i glommed onto was probably the largest hair, and it had a root. and had a root with some tissue onto it. dumb luck kept that towel from burning up and burning the pubic hair with it. investigators now had dna evidence from both crime scenes. biological evidence from renee powell s rape test kit and the hair from barbara walsh s apartment. scientists compared robert parker s dna to those dna samples. robert parker s dna profile was compared to the profile previously generated from the vaginal swabs. it was a match. robert parker had denied ever being in the victims apartments. and now the evidence directly contradicted him. two years after the crimes,
site was compromised. somebody s been there, moving things around, and it just makes the investigation a lot more difficult. in the meantime, it didn t take long for investigators to eliminate julie s husband as a suspect. when he was perfectly willing to take a polygraph examination, kept in contact with the officers trying to work this case, i think all suspicion was erased. but julie s autopsy did provide some important information about the killer. the medical examiner found evidence of sexual assault. a rape test kit recovered biological evidence, presumably of the perpetrator. unfortunately, dna testing wasn t yet available. crimes in 1985 were a lot harder to solve, just based on technology. there are certain things that we could yield dna profiles from today you wouldn t be able to get back then. as the weeks went by and the number of leads started to