Episode 65 Viola Hagenkord
Friendly, warm, and independent Viola Hagenkord, age 79, had moved to Anaheim, CA two years earlier to spend her golden years in a safe community near her family. Everyone in the apartment complex knew Viola, known as “Grandma” to some of her neighbors. It was a shock to everyone when the elderly lady was found raped and slain in her bed, having asphyxiated from a gag, her body beaten and bloodied. A break in at a nearby apartment led police to a suspect who would endure for decades, and there was a rash of rapes of elderly women in the area that police had to contend with. But it took forensic genealogy to point to Viola’s killer. And at his trial, the jury had to decide whether to believe his story, or what the evidence told them.