Cases solved by dna database hit (codis)
A CODIS database hit — crime-scene DNA matching a convicted offender already on file — was the break in these cases.
10 documented cases.
Erma Jean Goodou
Erma Jean Goodou, a 32-year-old mother, was beaten to death inside her home in the 800 block of East 51st Place North in Tulsa, Oklahoma, early on July 30, 1994, after an intruder broke in through a window in what authorities described as a break-in and attempted rape. Her 13-year-old daughter found her body in the kitchen. Investigators collected fingerprints and DNA at the scene, but no match was found, and the case went cold for nearly two decades. In 2012 Tulsa detectives submitted the crime-scene DNA to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation under a cold case grant, and in 2014 it matched a sample that the Texas Department of Public Safety had taken from Leroy Edward Gilbert Jr. after an unrelated arrest. Gilbert, who had lived within a mile of Goodou and said he had attended high school with her, was arrested in Bonham, Texas, in 2015. A Tulsa County jury convicted him of first-degree murder on September 21, 2017, and recommended life without parole; he was sentenced in November 2017, and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and life sentence in April 2019.
Jane Britton
Jane Britton, a 23-year-old Harvard graduate student in Near Eastern archaeology, was raped and bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment in January 1969. The case haunted Harvard and remained unsolved for nearly 50 years until, in 2018, DNA evidence identified her killer as Michael Sumpter, a convicted serial rapist who had died of cancer in 2001 and was therefore never tried.
Judith 'Judy' Weaver
Judy Weaver, a 42-year-old woman, was raped, bound, and strangled in her Everett, Washington home in June 1984, where her killer set a fire in an attempt to destroy evidence. The case stayed cold for nearly four decades until 2023, when a DNA profile developed from the ligatures on Weaver's wrists was entered into the national CODIS database and matched Mitchell Gaff, a convicted rapist whose profile was on file. Gaff pleaded guilty in 2026 and was sentenced to 50 years to life; investigators also linked him to the 1980 murder of 21-year-old Susan Vesey.
Kamal Matthews
Seven-year-old Kamal Matthews and his 26-year-old mother, Deroshia Matthews, were found strangled in their north Omaha, Nebraska home on April 24, 1979, after relatives reported they had not been heard from. Decades later DNA preserved from the scene was matched through the national CODIS database to Abdulmalik Husain, formerly known as Louis Walker, whose genetic profile entered the database after a 2004 arrest in Colorado. After an earlier prosecution collapsed in 2005 over an evidence-handling error, investigators retested the evidence with newer technology in 2021 and re-arrested Husain on February 12, 2025, charging him with two counts of murder.
Katie Sepich
Katie Sepich, a 22-year-old New Mexico State University graduate student, was raped, strangled, set on fire and abandoned near the old city dump east of Las Cruces, New Mexico, in late August 2003; her body was found by target shooters on the morning of August 31. The killer left his DNA beneath her fingernails, but it matched no one in any database, and the case went cold. Gabriel Adrian Avila committed an aggravated burglary about three months later and was sent to prison, where his DNA was collected; in December 2006 that profile matched the crime-scene evidence. Avila confessed, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping, rape and tampering with evidence, and was sentenced on May 3, 2007 to 69 years in prison. Because Avila's DNA had been taken only on conviction rather than at arrest, costing years of delay, Katie's parents championed Katie's Law, which spread to dozens of states and became the federal Katie Sepich Enhanced DNA Collection Act of 2010.
Krystal Jean Baker
Krystal Jean Baker, a 13-year-old from Texas City, Texas, left her grandmother's home on the afternoon of March 5, 1996, after an argument and was abducted as she looked for a way to a friend's house. She was sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled, and her body was found that same afternoon under the Trinity River Bridge on Interstate 10 in Chambers County, roughly two hours away near the Louisiana border; she remained a Jane Doe for about two weeks before being identified. DNA from a stain on her dress could not be analyzed with 1996 technology, and the case went cold for 14 years. A Chambers County evidence officer resubmitted the dress for testing in 2009, and a usable male profile was developed. On January 14, 2010, Kevin Edison Smith was arrested on a drug charge in Livonia, Louisiana, and a DNA sample was taken under that state's collection statute and entered into CODIS; on September 15, 2010, investigators were notified that Smith's profile matched the crime-scene DNA. He was arrested for the murder on September 22, 2010, and on April 26, 2012, a Chambers County jury convicted him of capital murder in less than 40 minutes; he was sentenced to 40 years, the equivalent of life without parole under 1996 Texas law. The case inspired the Krystal Jean Baker Act, allowing DNA collection from certain felony arrestees.
Mildred Matheny
Mildred Matheny, a 78-year-old widow with dementia, wandered from her sister's Lake Worth, Florida home on the afternoon of April 27, 1985, was lured into a car, driven roughly 30 miles north, sexually assaulted, and beaten so severely she died of her injuries eleven days later. The case went cold for nearly 36 years until the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Homicide Unit ran male DNA from the 1985 rape kit through the state CODIS database in 2021 and matched it to Richard Curtis Lange, whose DNA was on file from later weapons convictions. Lange was convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping, and sexual battery in February 2023 and sentenced to life in prison.
Rhonda Marie Fisher
Rhonda Marie Fisher, a 30-year-old woman from the Denver area, was last seen on the night of March 31, 1987, walking north on Monaco toward Leetsdale in Denver. The next morning, April 1, 1987, a passing motorist found her body down an embankment in the 3500 block of South Perry Park Road, south of Sedalia in rural Douglas County, Colorado. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled, and one of her hands appeared to have been restrained. The case went cold for nearly four decades. In late October 2025, a CODIS match tied DNA preserved from paper bags placed over Fisher's hands at the scene to Vincent Darrell Groves, regarded as one of Colorado's most prolific serial killers. Groves had died in custody in 1996. On December 2, 2025, the Douglas County Sheriff's Office announced the case solved.
Susan Lowe
Susan Barbara Lowe, a 19-year-old woman, was raped and strangled with her own nylon leggings on the evening of April 23, 1980, inside her apartment at the Quorum Apartments on 148th Avenue Southeast in Bellevue, Washington; her roommate found her the next morning. Detectives recovered a semen sample from the scene, but DNA testing did not yet exist and the case was inactivated in 1987. A DNA profile was developed from the preserved evidence in 1999, entered into the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab database around 2001, and produced no match for years. The case broke open in 2012 when the offender database was updated to include the DNA of men civilly committed as sexually violent predators at the Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island. The new profiles produced a Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) hit to Michael Allan Halgren, a serial rapist already confined there who had grown up only three blocks from Lowe's apartment and was 23 at the time of the killing. Halgren was arrested on January 9, 2013, and charged with first-degree murder. Because the decades-old DNA evidence had degraded, prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to second-degree murder on June 26, 2014. In July 2014 a King County judge sentenced Halgren to 14 and a half years to life in prison; should he ever be paroled, he would be returned to the Special Commitment Center rather than freed.
Susan Vesey
Susan Vesey, 21, was attacked inside her Everett, Washington home on the morning after her 21st birthday in July 1980 while she was alone with her two young children, who were unharmed. She was bound with cord, raped and strangled, and was found by her husband when he returned from a night shift at their residence on Casino Road. The case went unsolved for decades. The break came not in Vesey's case directly but in the 1984 Everett murder of Judy Weaver: DNA developed from that scene was uploaded to the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) and matched Mitchell Gaff, a convicted rapist whose profile was in the database because of a 1985 conviction for breaking into the home of two teenage sisters in Everett and raping them. Detectives confirmed Gaff in the Weaver case using an undercover ruse to collect his discarded chewing gum, then re-examined the Vesey killing; in April 2025, DNA from a white cord used to bind Vesey was matched to Gaff. Snohomish County prosecutors charged Gaff in the Vesey murder on March 13, 2026, after earlier charging him in the Weaver case. On April 16, 2026, Gaff pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder with premeditated intent, admitting to both killings, and on May 13, 2026, a judge sentenced him to a minimum of 50 years and a maximum of life in prison.