a woman was found dead in her own bedroom her two sons who lived with her in the same house heard and saw nothing detectives started investigating but they couldn’t find the culprit it took 38 years for a breakthrough in the case but nobody was prepared for the truth that emerged Linda slatton was born in 1950 in the state of Alabama USA she had loving parents and a younger sister named Judy from an early age Linda was ambitious and kind-hearted she always tried to help others which earned her many friends later she married a man
named Frank with whom she had two sons Jeff and Tim however as the years went by their marriage became increasingly problematic Frank developed an alcohol addiction and started to abuse his wife and children eventually Linda left and decided to move to Florida with her sons they settled in the City of Lakeland where Linda’s parents and sister already lived Linda rented a house in a residential complex by the lake and dedicated all her time to providing for her sons Linda took various jobs but money was always tight for her sometimes she had
to sell her belongings to pay the bills she couldn’t even afford a car so her Elder son Jeff had to ride his bicycle to school her younger son Tim played on a football team and often he had to ask his coach for a ride home after practice to avoid walking despite the financial difficulties Linda always strived to give her sons the most time and attention she could she took them on Hikes brought them to concerts of their favorite bands and overall try to ensure their childhood was filled with positive moments on the evening of September 3rd 1981
when Linda was 31 years old she waited for Jim to finish his practice and went with him to the neighbors who were hosting a small family gathering meanwhile Jeff arrived home and wanted to have dinner but there was hardly any food in the fridge he got angry at his mother hopped on his bicycle and rode to his grandparents house who lived on the other side of the city later when the whole family returned home Jeff argued with his mother about the empty fridge but eventually they wished each other a good night and went
to bed the next morning Linda’s sister who lived in the same complex went to her house to invite her for a cup of coffee she knocked on the door but received no response thinking that Linda had gone somewhere the woman turned around and was about to leave when she noticed that the bedroom window was open she approached it looked inside and Saw Linda lying across the bed in the next second the woman screamed and ran to the neighbors to call the police one look at her sister’s face was enough for her to realize that she was dead
detectives arrived at their house and began examining the crime scene Linda was lying on her bed her clothing partially pulled down with a wire hanger around her neck based on this evidence the police suspected that an unknown man had entered the victim’s room assaulted her and strangled her soon forensic experts confirmed this Theory by finding a palm print on the windowsill Linda often left it open since there was no air conditioning in the apartment making it easy for the killer to gain access while the detectives worked at the crime
scene the eldest son of the victim woke up from all the commotion the investigators took him outside and delivered the tragic news of his mother’s death afterward they woke up his younger brother and led him towards the exit however at that very moment as the boy passed by his mother’s room another police officer emerged from it and through the open door Tim saw his mother’s body and froze in place until the officer pulled him away Jeff and Tim age 15 and 12 at the time were in deep shock initially they simply
couldn’t believe that their mother was dead later the investigators managed to talk to them and the brother stated that they hadn’t heard any noise and hadn’t even woken up that night despite having their own rooms the detectives found this strange considering the building had very good Acoustics and given the brutal nature of the murder loud noises should have been audible from the victim’s room the police interviewed the neighbors who also hadn’t heard anything none of the residents in the complex had seen any suspicious individuals that day
medical experts examined the victim’s body and confirmed that she had been subjected to violence they extracted the Killer’s biological material but at that time they couldn’t conduct DNA analysis the experts also confirmed that Linda died as a result of strangulation thus the detectives had to investigate the case with almost no evidence the palm print could only help them if they managed to find a suspect and make a comparison Linda’s Sons moved in with their grandparents they remained in a State of Shock and constantly fear that the
unknown killer would come after them the fear was so intense that they slept in the same room as their grandmother while their grandfather sat in the living room with a rifle however the detectives believed that the children were not in danger in their opinion the crime had solely a sexual motive and the killer must have known the victim after speaking with Linda’s relatives they learned about her ex-husband who had a history of domestic violence he immediately became the prime suspect but the police quickly determined that the
man was in a different state at the time of the murder afterward the investigators discovered that shortly before her death Linda had started dating a certain man they located this person but he also had a solid alibi the detectives checked all the victims neighbors comparing their fingerprints with the sample found on the windowsill they then conducted a similar comparison with all previously convicted men residing in Lakeland but they couldn’t find any matches several weeks after the murder Linda’s Sons gradually started to recover and
eventually the relatives decided that the best option for them would be to return to school over time it did help the brothers as they began interacting with friends again and gradually returned to a normal life Tim rejoined the football team as his mother had always been proud of his accomplishments in the sport a month after her death he hung a photograph of his team in his bedroom as a reminder of how his mother had taught him to move forward and Achieve his goals meanwhile the detectives reached a dead end failing to find a suitable suspect
they decided to go back to the beginning and reconsider why the sons hadn’t heard any screams or signs of a struggle the police reviewed Jeff statements and noticed that he had an argument with Linda on the day of her murder furthermore the teenager himself mentioned that he and his mother frequently engaged in verbal disputes this made the detectives Ponder could Jeff have killed his mother they called him in for questioning and started asking various questions again soon Jeff realized that the investigators suspected him of the crime
he denied his involvement but the detectives continued to pressure him they offered Jeff to undergo a polygraph test and he agreed the polygraph operator did not detect any signs of deception but the police were not ready to give up soon after they called a man for questioning again and even planned to bring in a hypnotist to put him in a trance state Jeff constantly faced pressure and what are the investigators directly accused him of strangling his mother this led to the breaking point for Linda’s relatives and they demanded that
the police focus on finding the real killer and prohibited them from approaching Jeff despite this Jeff agreed to undergo another polygraph test and after successful results he was finally no longer considered a suspect from that point on the case remained stagnant for many years Jeff and Tim grew up got jobs and started their own families the murder of their mother still haunted them but every time they contacted the investigators they received the same response no progress had been made in the case in March 1999 experts extracted a DNA
sample from the biological material found on the victim’s body two years later a new detective assigned to the case compared it with samples from all the suspects including Linda’s two sons but there were no matches even comparing it with the FBI database yielded no results when Jeff met with this detective he realized that they had been acquainted for many years it turned out that the men regularly played bowling together with mutual friends they talked and the investigator promised Jeff that he would solve the case no matter what
around the same time Tim and Jeff heard about another unsolved crime that had remained unresolved for many years after it received widespread media attention new evidence emerged leading to the capture of the perpetrator that’s when the brothers decided to approach journalists and share their family tragedy they gave a detailed interview and the story made it into the local newspapers in September 2001 the detective received an interesting lead he learned that a man named Jimmy Ulmer had abducted a young woman through her
bedroom window a year after Linda’s murder for which he received an 80-year prison sentence what made it even more intriguing was that during Linda’s murder this person lived in the same residential complex just a few meters away from her house at the time of Homer’s arrest the DNA of criminals was not yet entered into a common database since it simply did not exist the man himself passed away in 96 and there were no remaining biological samples however the detective contacted the perpetrator’s mother Who provided
several personal belongings from which the experts managed to extract the sample unfortunately it did not match the DNA of the Killer but despite the setback the detective was not ready to give up he continued to search for new suspects consistently asked the FBI to run the DNA sample of the killer through all available databases and stayed in touch with Linda Sons unfortunately in 2015 he encountered health problems that forced him to retire despite his promise to see the case through to the end at that point Jeff and Tim had almost
resigned themselves to the thought that they would never find their mother’s killer however in 2019 A New Hope emerged when C.C Moore a renowned expert in genetic genealogy took on the case she took the DNA sample of the Killer and uploaded it to public databases then began searching for any matches typically such databases can even help find the most distant relatives of the DNA owner who could be living in different parts of the world without the slightest knowledge of each other’s existence with this information it is
possible to trace their family tree find common lines filter out thousands of relatives and identify the DNA owner after conducting all this extensive work Moore was able to pinpoint one family living in the area at the time of the murder within that family there was only one person who fit all the parameters leaving her to conclude that he was highly likely to be the Killer when the detectives heard his name they immediately realized they had come across him in Old reports his name was Joseph Clinton Mills Tim’s football
coach who regularly gave him a ride home from practice he had never been on the list of suspects but back in 1981 the police had taken a statement over the phone as he had dropped Tim off at home on that same day none of the detectives even considered the possibility that Mills could be the killer at that time he was only 20 years old and there was absolutely no evidence against him so the police didn’t compare his DNA and fingerprints with the samples found at the crime scene the investigators decided to hold off on
informing Jeff and Tim about this discovery first they needed to make sure that Mills was truly behind their mother’s murder after studying his biography they found out that in 1984 Mills was arrested for forgery of a will and his fingerprints were taken which are still kept in a paper archive to this day experts compared them with the fingerprints found on the victim’s window cell and obtained a perfect match after 38 years they finally learned the identity of the probable killer immediately after this Revelation the
detectives moved on to the final step obtaining a DNA sample from Mills to compare it with the biological material from the victim’s body they discovered that the man still lived in the same house as in 1981. Mills was now 58 years old owned a small business was married and had children and grandchildren the detectives monitored him for several weeks hoping to obtain some item with his DNA it could have been a cigarette butt a coffee cup a bottle and so on however they never had the opportunity so the police decided to
discreetly retrieve his trash they handed the bag to the laboratory where experts tried to find an item with his DNA and soon they succeeded the results were not long and coming Mill’s DNA matched completely with the sample found on Linda’s body afterward the detectives met with their sons to inform them of the progress in the case they were both shocked but Tim had a much harder time accepting it he couldn’t believe that his football coach turned out to be the same monster who had killed his mother Tim respected him and looked up to him
and what’s more Mills continued to give him rides home from practice even after the murder the man constantly encouraged him and always asked if there were any developments in his mother’s case for all these years a photo of his football team hung in Tim’s old bedroom with the monster who killed his mom standing right behind him in the same year Mills was arrested he remained calm and didn’t even ask what he was being accused of when brought in for questioning and asked about Linda’s murder he claimed to have no involvement according to him he
dropped off Tim and left Mills insisted that he never entered their house but the detectives knew it was a lie they informed him about the DNA and fingerprint match after which the suspect suddenly changed his version of events now Mills insisted that on that night Linda herself invited him to sneak into her bedroom through the window for an intimate encounter then she asked him to lightly choke her with a hanger but Mills miscalculated his strength and ended up killing her of course the detectives didn’t believe this story for
a second considering all the existing evidence they had a much more plausible Theory based on the fact that Mills had repeatedly given Tim rides home he had seen his mother and could have targeted her as a victim on the evening of the murder he dropped off the boy who immediately went to a party at the neighbor’s house with his mother Mills took advantage of the fact that no one would be home in their house he drove away for some distance and The Returned on foot sneaking into Linda’s bedroom through the window and hiding in
the closet he spent several hours there waiting for everyone to go to sleep in that same closet he took a wire hanger and used it as a murder weapon after subjecting the victim to violence he left the house through the window based on all the available evidence charges were brought against Mills for the murder and the case was handed over to court in the State of Florida the death penalty was a possible sentence for such a crime and on February 9 2022 Mills decided to make a deal with the prosecution to avoid this fate he
confessed to the murder but under the conditions of the agreement he was not required to disclose the details of the crime Linda’s Sons were unhappy with this fact in the courtroom Tim shouted at his coach demanding to know why he took his mother away from him but the man remained silent looking down only when given the opportunity for a final statement Mills said I’m a good person I’m Not Who they’re trying to portray me as this angered the brothers even more but ultimately they were grateful to the investigators for bringing the case to a
conclusion and finally finding the Killer Mills was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after the verdict was delivered Jeff and Tim promised to try to live honorable lives and dedicate themselves to their families as that is what their mother would have wanted please share your opinions on this story in the comments and don’t forget to like this video If you enjoyed it thank you for watching thank you foreign
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