In June 1976, 16 year old Carol Sue Klaber was found in a ditch, half nude and bludgeoned to death. She had last been seen by multiple witnesses getting into a distinctive sedan driven by a tall, slender, blond young man. But no one knew who he was. Multiple leads and suspects failed to pan out. Then two years later a horrific rape happened in Park Hills that almost exactly mirrored Carol’s case, down to the description of the suspect. Unfortunately, police didn’t know who this rapist was, either. Both cases went unsolved for more than 40 years. When cold case investigators reopened the Carol Klaber case, they ended up solving both: one using forensic genealogy, and the other, using old fashioned methods.

In November, 1978, the unidentified remains of a woman were found in a logging area in Granby, Massachusetts. Police determined that the woman, who was estimated to be in her 20's, had been shot in the head and was a homicide victim. A belt was found wrapped around her neck, an indication that the killer had used it to drag the body to where it was found. Police were not able to link the unidentified woman to any local missing persons cases, and she was dubbed 'Granby Girl'. She was laid to rest in a grave marked 'unknown'.

In 1973, Leslie Perlov, Stanford graduate and Stanford Law Library clerk, was found slain in the hills overlooking the Stanford campus. In 1974, it happened again. Janet Taylor was found in a roadside ditch, after hitchhiking on the Stanford campus. The similarities between the two cases were startling, down to the identical ages of the victims.