140. Smells Like A Forty Year Waiting Game - How Never Giving Up Solved Carolyn Rose's Murder

Carolyn Rose was a driven, successful real estate agent working in suburban Pensacola Florida when one day, after she didn't return from a mid-day home showing, her colleagues drove over to the empty house to find her car still parked in the driveway.  Inside the empty, brand new home they found Carolyn's crumpled nude body, hands bound - and dead.  She had been raped before being strangled.  The 47 year-old Rose had left no notes behind indicating who she was to meet at the showing, which had obviously been a setup by the murderer.  After chasing down and eliminating their one and only solid lead, police had nowhere to go.  But here's where solid police work and determination prove once again to be the key in solving hard cases, especially ones like this.  It turns out that even in 1978, the Escambia County Florida Sheriff's Homicide Squad collected every single piece of evidence at the crime scene and preserved it with intensive care.  And then, every single year - every year - on the anniversary of Carolyn's killing, the detectives re-tested whatever they could from that preserved crime-scene until...at the beginning of June 2020 - 42 years after the murder - DNA testing of that preserved evidence finally got a hit - and the murder was solved.  Take a peek with Melissa at a very old crime solved with very new technology by some very dedicated law enforcement heroes - and share the tragic unfairness of a legal system that released Carolyn's murderer 18 years early from a previous conviction, just in time to give him the opportunity to commit his heinous offense.