Solved cold cases in Michigan
2 documented cases.
Roxanne Wood
Roxanne Leigh Wood, a 30-year-old woman, was found murdered in the kitchen of her home in Niles Township, Berrien County, Michigan, in February 1987, after a night out bowling. She had been sexually assaulted and her throat had been cut, and the killer left a small amount of his DNA at the scene. The case went cold for 35 years, with Roxanne's husband Terry Wood remaining the primary suspect despite no evidence against him. In 2020 the Michigan State Police, partnering with Western Michigan University's Cold Case Program, sent the badly degraded evidence to Identifinders International, where forensic scientists built a usable DNA profile from what was called a record-low amount of genetic material. Investigative genetic genealogist Gabriella Vargas traced that profile through public genealogy databases and, in a matter of days, narrowed the suspects to three brothers, pointing to Patrick Wayne Gilham of South Bend, Indiana. Undercover troopers covertly collected Gilham's DNA from a discarded cigarette, confirming the match. Gilham, who had a prior conviction for a 1979 sexual assault in Indiana, was arrested in February 2022, pleaded no contest to second-degree murder, and was sentenced to 23 to 50 years in prison.
Stella Lintemuth
Stella Lintemuth, an 89-year-old widow living alone in Big Rapids, Michigan, was found murdered in her bedroom on April 23, 1980, just days before her 90th birthday. She had been attacked in her home, and an electrical cord from a porcelain lamp was wrapped around her neck and face. Michigan State Police latent examiner Jerry Disler recovered two fingerprints from the base of the lamp, but in 1980 the only way to identify a print was to compare it by hand against a known suspect, and there was no suspect. The case went cold for more than a quarter century, with local theories pointing to a transient who might have come and gone on the rail line that ran behind the house. In December 2006, Michigan State Police forensic scientist Greg Michaud realized the old latent prints had never been run through the FBI's national fingerprint database, which had not existed in 1980. He entered the print into the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System and got a hit: Scott Elwood Graham, a man who by then was confined in a psychiatric hospital in California. With Graham identified, examiners matched several additional latent prints from the scene to him. The Mecosta County prosecutor charged Graham in 2007, and in 2009 a jury convicted him of first-degree premeditated murder after a six-day trial; he was sentenced to life in prison. The work earned the FBI's 2007 Latent Hit of the Year recognition.