When more than 2 dozen male bodies were unearthed in the crawlspace of serial killer John Wayne Gacy's home in the Norwood Park suburb of Chicago in the late 1970's, Gacy's gruesome and twisted crime spree came to an end. But just because the killer was behind bars, the work of the investigators continued as they painstakingly tried to identify all of the remains. Over the years, most of the victims were identified, all but a handful. As DNA science evolved, it soon became clear that forensic genealogy may be able to help ID the rest, and in this episode we cover the case of one of those victims who was given his name back thanks to this technology. For years he was known as 'Gacy Victim 5'. We now know his name to be Francis Wayne Alexander, and this is his story.

Sylvia Quayle was a creative and artistic young woman who loved life when hers was brutally taken from her in August 1981. Sylvia’s was the first murder on record in bucolic Cherry Hills Village, Colorado, and police were stumped until, two years later, they thought the case was solved. But then that suspect was exonerated, and ten years later, the cold as ice case was back to square one. Ample DNA evidence left by a single male perpetrator did not get investigators anywhere – it simply served to rule out suspect after suspect. Finally, forensic genealogy finally pointed in the right direction – to a suspect who lived nearby and targeted Sylvia. He got away with it for decades, but finally, justice came for him

On October 6, 1971 a decomposing body of a woman was found off a logging road in a wooded area near Route 101 in Bedford, New Hampshire, an area now the site of the on-ramp from Route 101 to Kilton Road in Bedford. Because her body had been covered by tree branches not native to that area, police surmised that the woman had been murdered, and her killer had brought branches with them to cover her body. Due to the advanced decomposition, gathering details about the woman were tough. Despite several efforts over years, she remained unidentified and was dubbed 'Bedford Jane Doe'. Finally, DNA and genetic genealogy would lead the way to Bedford Jane Doe getting her name back.She was Kathy Alston, and this is her story.