girly girl? or was she a little bit of a tomboy? what do you remember? oh, no. she was a girly girl. december 19th, 1979, was a big night for michelle. it was for school choirs christmas banquet at the sheraton inn. with her hair done up to perfection and decked out in her favorite black dress and rabbit for court, she looked like an angel. each alicia. her nickname was fara. john is michelle s brother in law. it was for a faucet majors. the hairdo. with that here. so, she was farah. the it was a school night, after the banquet, michelle asked jean to go with her to the mall. that jane had homework to do. so when michelle said let s go to the mall tonight, jane, that was going to work for you? correct. i turned her down. so, going solo, michelle got in her parents 1972 buick electra and headed off to the brand new westdale mall on the southwest side of town. she had $180 cash on her to pay for equal her mother had picked out. kurt was also at the mall that night, work
calls late into the night. at 2:30 am, she dwelled michelle s friend, jane. i was sound asleep and my dad came and walk me up. said misses martinko is on the phone. those are not good calls. she wanted to know if i knew where michel was. but jean did not know. nobody did. so, in the middle of the night, in a panic, michelle s mom called the police again. this time, they dispatched and officer. jim kincade got the call out for in. they sent me out to the mall to see if i could look at this car. just hours earlier, the mall was bustling with christmas shoppers. now, it was dark. deserted. in the distance, officer kincade spotted a car in the far reaches of the parking lot. a long walk from the entrance to the jcpenney. it seemed to match the description. looking from your vehicle, could you see what had happened
over as lead investigator in 2015, he still thought dna would solve the crime. so, he did another deep dive into a case file that had been built by so many before him. now, we re just trying to find men who were listed in these reports, that could have possibly had a connection to her, or men that would ve had a connection to the mall. i thought eventually, if we come enough people, we re gonna get our suspect. that after more than 125 tests, no one matched the killers d. o. t.. they were out of leads. and then parabon comes into this. what is that? parabon is a private lab. what parabon was offering is to take the genetic profile that we had and to create an image. create an image? yeah like an actual a me like an up in the office photo to be on the lookout for this guy? exactly, a computer generated, philly sketch. excuse me i sent a little skeptical. that sounds like food science
nick watt was historic? why did he see was there? he was there to buy her christmas present. her? his ex girlfriend? yeah. the night she s killed, he s at the mall to buy her if president, even though there are no longer boyfriend, girlfriend. correct. i mean, that sounds cute curious even out, just saying it. because a lot of the detectives thought that might be too much of a coincidence. and he recounted his movements for detectives. he and a budding bumped into michelle at the moment around 8:30. he said he had no idea michelle was missing until her father called his house about 3:30 am. he told detectives he and his mom jumped in the car to go searching. but couldn t find her. so, was the early thinking we re going to get this young guy and he and have a case here? i think so. yes kind of sweat him a little bit, and he ll come. yeah. the andes story never changed.
then there were three . it was an act of unspeakable violence. it was a really horrific crime. everybody was scared. a murder that shattered a family. my parents were devastated. my mother eventually did not cool out of the house. a who done it that grabbed hold of the city and wouldn t let go. it s been a cloud hanging over the community for 40 years. a case that touched generations of investigators, who refused to quit until the killer was found. we ve cared about this family, they cared about solving this murder. they weren t going to give up. and they didn t. kurt thomas says he was a lucky kid. he got to grow up in cedar rapids, iowa. it was a magical level. we didn t know anything but fun. a lot of that fun happened at the mall,.